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GREATNESS  IN  LITERATURE 

AND  OTHER  PAPERS 


BY 


W.    P.   TRENT 

PROFESSOR  OF  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  IN   COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY 

AUTHOR   OF   "SOUTHERN    STATESMEN   OF   THE   OLD 

REGIME,"    "THE   AUTHORITY   OF 

CRITICISM,"   ETC.,   ETC. 


NEW   YORK 

THOMAS    Y.    CROWELL   &   CO. 

PUBLISHERS 


Copyright,  1905, 
By  THOMAS  Y.  CROWELL  &  CO. 


Published,  September,  1905. 


PREFACE 


This  volume  might  have  been  described  as  a 
collection  of  literary  addresses  rather  than  of 
"  papers,"  since  far  the  larger  portion  of  its  con- 
tents was  prepared  for  delivery  on  academic  occa- 
sions. Everything,  however,  has  been  somewhat 
altered  for  publication,  whether  here  or  in  the 
magazines  from  which  I  have  been  kindly  allowed 
to  reprint  some  articles ;  hence  I  have  adopted 
the  rather  non-committal  term  "  papers."  I  could 
not  bring  myself  to  employ  that  delightful  and 
alluring  word  "essays,"  because  that  connotes  to 
my  mind  a  discursive  charm  which,  perhaps,  I 
could  not  impart  to  any  composition,  and  which 
I  certainly  did  not  try  to  impart  to  most  of  the 
writings  here  collected.  In  every  case  except 
the  last  paper  I  was  pursuing,  successfully  or 
unsuccessfully,  a  line  of  thought  rather  than 
loitering  in  the  highways  and  byways  of  appre- 
ciative criticism.  This  fact,  or  what  I  think  to 
be  a  fact,  seemed  at  least  not   obscured   by  the 


266971 


IV  PREFACE 

use  of  the  term  "  papers,"  whereas,  if  I  had 
employed  the  term  "  essays,"  I  should  have  run 
the  risk  of  beguiling  some  readers  not  acquainted 
with  my  idiosyncratic  deficiencies  into  suppos- 
ing that  they  were  taking  up  a  book  designed 
primarily  to  give  them  pleasure.  I  should  be 
delighted  to  give  pleasure,  and  I  sincerely  hope 
I  shall  give  no  pain ;  but  my  main  object  is  to 
discuss  certain  topics  with  all  the  readers  I  can 
secure,  especially  with  those  who  like  myself  are 
interested  in  the  problems  that  confront  the  critic 
and  the  teacher  of  literature.  But  now,  having 
done  my  best  to  warn  off  any  reader  who  is  on 
the  lookout  for  true  essays  and  to  indicate  the 
class  of  persons  likely,  if  any  are,  to  find  some- 
thing to  their  account  in  my  volume,  I  leave  that 
newcomer  into  the  world  of  books  to  take  care 

of  itself. 

W.  P.  TRENT. 

New  York, 
March  n,  1905. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.    The  Question  of  "Greatness  in  Litera- 
ture"    i 

II.    A  Word  for  the   Smaller  Authors  and 

for  Popular  Judgment     ....  43 

III.  The  Aims  and  Methods  of  Literary  Study  59 

IV.  Criticism  and  Faith 95 

V.     Literature  and  Science       .        .        .        .109 

VI.    Teaching  Literature 147 

VII.    Some  Remarks  on  Modern  Book-burning  .     185 
VIII.    The  Love  of  Poetry 219 


I 

THE   QUESTION   OF 
"GREATNESS    IN    LITERATURE" 


[Prepared  originally  in  answer  to  some  queries  propounded 
by  students  of  a  course  given  in  the  Columbia  Summer  Ses- 
sion of  1901.  Delivered  as  a  lecture  in  Cincinnati,  Decem- 
ber, 1 90 1.  Published  in  The  International  Monthly  for  May, 
1902.] 


THE    QUESTION    OF 
"GREATNESS    IN    LITERATURE" 

It  is  hard  to  conceive  of  a  rasher  attempt,  at 
least  in  the  sphere  of  thought,  than  the  one  im- 
plied by  the  title  above.  A  discussion  of  "  great- 
ness in  literature,"  and  of  some  of  the  standards 
by  which  it  may  be  determined,  involves  the  infer- 
ence that  the  person  who  voluntarily  enters  upon 
it,  thinks  he  knows  something  definite  about  a 
matter  over  which  critics  have  been  disputing  for 
centuries  as  violently  as  physicians  and  theolo- 
gians have  wrangled  over  their  respective  topics 
of  contention.  Such  an  implication  hampers  both 
him  who  conducts  a  discussion  and  him  who  fol- 
lows it.  Yet  it  is  obvious  that  if  every  man  stood 
in  awe  of  being  deemed  presumptuous,  and  kept 
silence  with  regard  to  all  vexed  problems,  few  at- 
tempts would  be  made  either  to  settle  or  to  come 
nearer  settling  them.  In  consequence,  the  world 
of  thought  would  almost  stand  still  and  the  world 
of  action,  to  use  a  homely  phrase,  would  surely 
slow   down.      A   certain    amount   of   rashness    in 

3 


4  THE   QUESTION   OF 

theorizing  is  therefore  permissible,  especially  in 
connection  with  topics  of  marked  importance, 
even  though  the  results  obtained  should,  after 
all,  appear  very  commonplace. 

That  it  is  important  to  be  able,  approximately, 
to  estimate  "greatness  in  literature"  seems  appar- 
ent. Never  before  has  literature  meant  so  much 
to  the  public  at  large  as  it  does  in  our  democratic 
age,  in  which  books  are  wonderfully  cheap  and 
education  is  widely  diffused.  It  follows  that  the 
struggle  between  good  books  and  bad,  between 
great  books  and  trivial,  has  never  before  meant 
so  much  to  mankind.  When  readers  were  few, 
the  harm  done  by  bad  or  poor  books  was  com- 
paratively limited,  and  the  world  could  often  well 
afford  to  allow  time  to  do  the  necessary  sifting. 
But  now  that  we  are  all  readers,  now  that  our 
daily  newspapers  describe  countless  new  books 
and  new  editions,  while  our  department  stores  set 
them  before  our  eyes  at  any  price  we  may  have 
fixed  upon,  the  question  how  we  may  best  pick  and 
choose  among  the  thousands  of  volumes  offered 
us,  is  one  that  many  conscientious  men  and 
women  who  care  for  literature  cannot  dismiss 
lightly,  despite  the  fact  that  there  is  no  lack  of 
genial  eclectic  lovers  of  books  to  tell  them,  with 


"GREATNESS   IN   LITERATURE"  5 

more  than  a  grain  of  truth,  that  overserious  read- 
ing is  one  of  the  banes  of  our  self-conscious  age. 
But  this  question  of  the  Choice  of  Books,  about 
which  critics  like  Frederic  Harrison  have  written 
helpfully  and  delightfully,  is  indissolubly  involved 
with  the  question  of  "  greatness  in  literature," 
and  of  the  standards  by  which  this  may  be  de- 
termined. The  marked  importance  of  the  latter 
question  being  thus  apparent,  the  rashness  of 
discussing  it  is  minimized,  and  further  apologies 
may  be  waived. 

The  use  of  the  word  "greatness"  implies  stand- 
ards of  comparison,  which  may  be  individual  or 
collective.  It  is  clear  that  a  poem  or  other  piece 
of  literature  may  be  great  to  me  and  not  to  the 
rest  of  the  world,  or  that  it  may  be  accepted  as 
great  by  a  majority  of  critics  and  readers  and  not 
seem  at  all  great  to  me.  Furthermore,  a  piece 
of  literature  may  be  great  to  contemporaries  of 
its  author  and  by  no  means  great  to  posterity,  or 
vice  versa,  —  although,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  sel- 
dom happens  that  posterity  sees  real  greatness  in 
what  did  not  profoundly  appeal  to  contemporaries. 
It  often  sees  interest,  charm,  but  rarely  greatness. 

From  these  facts  we  infer  that  collective  stand- 
ards   are    not    of    paramount    value    when    they 


6  THE  QUESTION   OF 

merely  involve  contemporary  appreciation  of  a 
book  or  writer,  but  that  they  do  gain  very  great 
value  when  they  have  been  held  by  a  number 
of  generations.  For  example,  it  is  probably 
not  wise,  but  it  is  certainly  permissible,  to  affirm 
that  Tennyson  is  not  a  great  poet.  It  would 
be  the  height  of  unwisdom  to  maintain  that 
Homer  is  not  a  great  poet,  provided  we  admit 
his  existence,  or  to  announce  as  Joel  Barlow, 
our  own  half-forgotten  epic  poet,  once  did,  in  a 
far  from  Platonic  style,  that  Homer  has  exerted 
a  most  immoral  influence  on  mankind.  But  while 
this  is  true,  it  is  equally  true  that  our  individual 
standards  are  of  paramount  importance  to  us  as 
individuals.  If  we  cannot  see  that  the  "Iliad"  is 
great,  we  are  reduced  to  three  unpleasant  modes 
of  procedure,  —  we  either  stifle  our  thoughts,  or 
pretend  to  admire  what  we  do  not,  which  is  unedi- 
fying  conventionality  or  rank  hypocrisy,  or  else  as 
Herbert  Spencer  did  in  his  "Autobiography,"  we 
proclaim  our  disagreement  with  the  world's  verdict, 
and  run  the  risk  of  being  sneered  at  or  called  stupid 
by  people  whose  acquaintance  with  Homer  is  prob- 
ably far  from  profound. 

Such  being  the  case,  we  may  infer  that  it  is  a 
matter  of  some  importance,  if  we  care  for  litera- 


"GREATNESS   IN   LITERATURE"  7 

ture  at  all,  for  us  who  study  or  read  books,  to  put 
our  individual  standards  as  far  as  possible  in  ac- 
cord with  the  collective  standards.  In  this  way  we 
shall  approximate  true  culture ;  to  apply  Matthew 
Arnold's  words,  we  shall  learn  to  know  and  agree 
with  the  best  that  has  been  thought  and  said 
in  the  world  about  literature.  This  is  not  all  of 
culture,  but  it  is  a  most  important  part  of  it.  It 
is  only  fair  to  add,  however,  that  a  whole  school 
of  critics  has  of  late  more  or  less  denied  the  need 
of  our  taking  account  of  collective  standards. 
These  are  the  Impressionists,  well  represented 
by  M.  Jules  Lemaitre,  and  their  shibboleth  seems 
to  be,  "  I  like  this  book  ;  if  you  don't,  you  can  keep 
your  own  opinion  and  I'll  keep  mine."  This  is  a 
very  independent,  and  ostensibly  liberal,  statement 
of  principles,  and  it  is  naturally  popular ;  but  a  fool 
can  make  it  as  complacently  as  a  wise  man,  and  it 
leads  to  chaos  in  matters  of  taste.  In  its  extreme 
forms,  impressionism  is  individualism  run  mad,  and 
has  few  or  no  uses ;  in  more  moderate  forms  it 
has  uses  which,  however,  need  not  be  discussed 
here. 

But  what  has  all  this  to  do  with  the  question  of 
"  greatness  in  literature "  ?  This  much  at  least. 
Greatness  implying  standards  of  comparison,  those 


8  THE  QUESTION  OF 

standards  being  individual  and  collective,  and  the 
collective  being  the  more  important  of  the  two,  but 
the  individual  nearer  to  us,  it  seems  to  follow  that 
we  ought  first  to  examine  our  own  ideas  of  "  great- 
ness in  literature,"  then  consult  the  chief  critics  to 
determine  what  writings  the  collective  wisdom  of 
mankind  has  pronounced  great,  and  finally  try  to 
corroborate  and  enlarge  our  own  ideas  by  means 
of  such  consultation  and  of  wide  reading.  In  this 
process  we  start  with  what  is  nearest  to  us,  our 
own  feelings  and  thoughts,  and  widen  out  our  con- 
ceptions until  we  embrace  as  much  of  the  universal 
as  we  can.  This  appears  to  be  logical  and  to  be 
analogous  with  other  mental  processes. 

Now  how  do  we  as  individuals  use  the  term 
"great"  in  connection  with  literature?  We  use  it 
loosely,  but  no  more  loosely  than  in  other  connec- 
tions, and  presumably  we  use  it  mainly  of  things  or 
persons  that  do  something,  not  of  things  or  persons 
that  are  on  the  whole  quiescent,  no  matter  how  full 
they  may  be  of  potential  energy.  The  great  states- 
man, for  example,  is  to  each  of  us  the  man  who 
accomplishes  something  in  the  sphere  of  politics, 
not  the  man  who  has  merely  the  potentialities  of  suc- 
cess. And  he  must  accomplish  something  which 
in  our  view  is  large,  important,  influential,  com- 


"GREATNESS   IN   LITERATURE"  9 

paratively  permanent,  more  or  less  original,  and 
unique,  or  we  shall  not  call  him  great  —  at  least 
we  shall  not  call  him  great  for  long.  Do  we  not 
apply  the  term  with  respect  to  literature  in  some 
such  way  ?  The  poem  or  the  poet,  the  book  or 
the  writer,  must  do  something  with  us,  and 
that  something  must  be  large,  important,  influ- 
ential, comparatively  permanent,  more  or  less 
original,  and  unique.  Obviously  there  are  two 
spheres  in  which  this  large,  important  something 
may  be  done,  —  the  sphere  of  our  emotions  and 
the  sphere  of  our  intelligence.  One  book  stirs 
our  feelings  deeply  and  permanently ;  another 
opens  out  a  range  of  new  ideas  which  make  an 
impression  upon  our  lives ;  we  call  both  these 
books  great,  and  rightly. 

Perhaps  I  may  venture  by  way  of  illustration 
to  give  two  instances  out  of  my  own  experience. 
When  I  first  read  it,  I  called  Balzac's  "  Pere 
Goriot "  a  great  book  because  the  life  of  the 
devoted  old  father  who  gave  up  everything  for 
his  heartless  daughters,  left  upon  me  a  large 
and  deep  impression  of  the  power  of  the  pater- 
nal instinct ;  it  left  a  permanent  sense  of  the 
pathos  of  much  of  this  mortal  life ;  it  was  im- 
portant and  influential,  I   trust,  in  widening   my 


10  THE   QUESTION   OF 

sympathies;  and  the  novel  seemed  original  and 
unique  because  I  saw  that  Balzac  had  not  imi- 
tated Shakspere  in  "  Lear,"  but  had  accom- 
plished the  wonderful  feat  of  taking  a  situation 
not  dissimilar  to  that  treated  by  Shakspere,  and 
developing  it  into  something  very  different  from 
"  Lear,"  and  almost  as  impressive,  though  not 
so  grandly  poetical.  So  I  called  that  a  great 
novel  when  I  first  read  it,  and  I  have  continued 
to  call  it  such.1  The  other  book  I  shall  men- 
tion only,  but  its  effects  upon  me  might  be 
analyzed  as  easily.  It  was  Gibbon's  "  Decline 
and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire."  That  book 
enlarged  my  knowledge  and  my  conception  of 
history  so  immensely  and  permanently  that  I 
rose  from  perusing  its  final  pages  as  certain  of 
its  tremendous  greatness  as  I  was  of  my  own 
existence.  But  it  should  be  observed  that  while 
Gibbon's  great  history  affects  the  mind  pri- 
marily, it  affects  the  emotions  also,  —  think  of 
the    splendid    pictures    it    contains,  —  and     that 

1  Whether  I  or  any  one  else  should  call  Turgenev's  "  Lear  of 
the  Steppes "  great  or  merely  impressive  is  a  point  that  may  be 
raised  in  this  connection,  but  not  discussed  here.  The  universality 
of  the  appeal  made  by  the  Lear  story  is  curiously  illustrated  by  the 
fact  that  it  has  been  recently  made  the  motive  of  a  Yiddish  play 
by  Mr.  Jacob  Gordin. 


"GREATNESS   IN   LITERATURE"  I  I 

"  Pere  Goriot,"  while  it  affects  the  emo- 
tions primarily,  affects  the  mind  also  by  giving 
it  many  fresh  ideas  about  human,  and  espe- 
cially French,  life.  It  follows  that  while  it 
is  convenient  to  distinguish  between  the  two 
spheres  in  which  literature  acts,  —  the  emotions 
and  the  intelligence,  —  as  a  matter  of  fact,  al- 
most every  piece  of  good  literature  will  operate 
in  both.  One  cannot  really  separate,  for  purposes 
of  isolation,  the  effects  of  a  book  any  more  than 
one  can  so  separate,  save  in  theory,  the  faculties 
of  the  person  that  feels  those  effects. 

From  these  two  instances  of  the  application  of 
the  individual  standard  to  determine  "  greatness  in 
literature,"  let  us  turn  to  consider  the  application 
of  the  collective  standards.  With  regard  to  "Pere 
Goriot "  and  the  "  Decline  and  Fall "  I  knew 
long  beforehand  that  the  world  had  pronounced 
them  both  to  be  great  books.  It  was,  therefore, 
not  necessary  to  verify  my  main  conclusions,  al- 
though I  have  found  it  worth  while  to  read  criti- 
cisms of  Balzac  and  Gibbon  in  order  to  determine, 
if  I  could,  whether  the  various  grounds  on  which  I 
based  my  judgments  were  correctly  taken.  That 
is  usually  a  very  good  thing  to  do.  But  it  may 
easily   happen,   especially   if   we   are   not   widely 


12  THE   QUESTION   OF 

read,  or  are  desultory  in  our  reading,  that  we 
may  chance  upon  a  book  the  name  and  reputation 
of  which  are  unfamiliar  to  us,  which  nevertheless 
moves  us  profoundly  and  seems  to  us  great.  This 
is  a  case  for  using  the  collective  standards.  We 
may  find  that  the  book  has  for  years  been  regarded 
as  great  by  a  sufficient  number  of  readers  fairly  to 
entitle  it  to  rank  as  a  classic, — in  which  case  our 
own  standards  are  proved  to  be  in  harmony  with 
those  of  the  world,  and  we  are  encouraged  more 
and  more  to  trust  to  our  own  judgments.  This  is 
the  way,  it  seems  to  me,  that  we  best  educate  our- 
selves in  literature, — by  constantly  reading  and 
verifying  the  judgments  we  pass,  —  not  slavishly, 
not  giving  up  our  own  points  of  view  simply  be- 
cause we  do  not  find  the  best  critics  on  our  side, 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  not  dogmatically  or  ego- 
tistically maintaining  our  own  views, — but  quietly 
and  with  an  open  mind  confirming  our  presumably 
correct  judgments,  and  reconsidering  and  revising 
our  presumably  erroneous  ones  by  reading  and 
conversation  and  reflection. 

But  in  case  the  book  we  have  accidentally  read 
and  thought  great  is  condemned  by  the  critics,  or 
not  even  mentioned  by  them,  what  are  we  to  con- 
clude ?     That  we  were  entirely  mistaken  ?     That 


"GREATNESS   IN   LITERATURE"  1 3 

is  scarcely  necessary.  The  book  has  done  great 
things  for  us,  and  is  truly  great  thus  far.  We 
may  be  the  one  reader  out  of  a  thousand  for 
whom  the  author  was  writing,  —  his  fit  audience, 
though  very  few.  It  may  be  because  the  book  or 
poem  suited  a  transient  mood.  It  may  be  because 
it  suited  our  special  epoch  of  life,  or  our  class  in- 
stincts and  prepossessions,  or  what  not.  Here  we 
have  a  reason  why  books  are  immensely  popu- 
lar with  one  generation,  yet  are  scarcely  read  by 
the  next.  Generations  change,  —  progressing  in 
some  ways,  losing  in  others,  but,  as  we  trust,  on 
the  whole  progressing.  What  wonder,  then,  that 
the  book  which  exactly  suited  our  fathers,  but  did 
not  go  much  below  the  surface,  so  as  to  touch 
permanent  ideas  and  emotions  uniquely  and  pro- 
foundly should  be  unread  to-day !  As  we  rise  in 
culture,  we  leave  behind  a  novelist  like  E.  P.  Roe, 
and  turn  to  Thackeray;  but  this  does  not  mean 
that  we  should  sneer  at  the  popular  American 
novelist,  or  at  the  people  who  liked  his  books,  — 
much  less  at  those  who  still  like  them,  —  any  more 
than  it  means  that  on  first  reading  "  Henry 
Esmond "  and  finding  it  delightful,  we  should 
naively  write  a  letter  commending  it  to  the 
readers  of  our  favorite  literary  weekly. 


14  THE  QUESTION   OF 

Are  we  not  led  to  conclude  that  there  is  a  rela- 
tive "greatness  in  literature,"  as  well  as,  what  we 
may  call  for  convenience,  an  absolute  greatness, 
and  that  we  can  safely  use  the  word  "  great"  only 
in  connection  with  works  that  have  stood  the  col- 
lective standards  successfully  ?  It  seems  better 
for  practical  purposes  to  emphasize  the  latter  con- 
clusion. Let  us  call  that  "great"  which  has  pro- 
duced large,  important,  influential,  permanent, 
original,  and  unique  results  both  in  ourselves  and 
in  a  majority  of  readers  and  critics,  past  and 
present.  Let  us  insert  a  "perhaps"  or  a  "prob- 
ably "  or  some  other  qualification  before  the  word 
"great"  used  of  any  living  writer,  except,  it  may 
be,  in  the  case  of  an  author  like  Count  Tolstoy, 
whose  chief  works  have  been  long  before  the 
world,  and  have  attained  that  cosmopolitan  fame 
which  as  a  criterion  of  merit  is  no  bad  substitute 
for  the  fame  awarded  by  time.  This  may  seem 
cold  and  heartless  and  pedantic,  yet  it  surely 
raises  the  dignity  of  literature,  and  gives  us  a 
better  chance  for  free  and  honest  contemporary 
criticism. 

But  let  us  look  for  a  moment  at  the  negative 
side  of  the  question.  If  we  so  limit  the  word 
"  great  "  in  its  application,  what  terms  are  we  to 


"GREATNESS   IN   LITERATURE"  I  5 

apply  to  the  enormous  masses  of  literature  that  lie 
below  the  line  of  greatness  ?  There  are  several 
terms  that  seem  available.  The  writings  that 
have  appealed  to  us  and  to  those  similarly  minded 
may  be  delightful,  as  in  the  case  of  the  society 
poetry  of  Matthew  Prior.  They  may  be  charming, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  delicate  verses  of  Mr.  Austin 
Dobson.  They  may  be  good,  as  in  the  case  of 
perhaps  eight  out  of  ten  of  the  poets  who  survive 
sufficiently  to  be  represented  at  considerable 
length  in  such  a  standard  anthology  as  Mr. 
Humphry  Ward's  "  English  Poets,"  or  of  the 
essayists  and  novelists  whose  works  continue  to 
be  published  in  uniform  collected  editions.  Prob- 
ably at  least  eight-tenths  of  the  literature  which 
the  best  critics  discuss  ranges  from  fair  to  good  as 
a  whole.  If  it  is  only  fair,  we  need  not  read  it, 
unless  we  are  trying  to  make  critics  of  ourselves, 
or  historians  of  literature;  and  we  can  tell  very 
accurately  whether  it  is  only  fair  by  observing  the 
amount  of  attention  it  receives  from  critics  whose 
judgments  we  have  learned  to  respect.  In  the 
case  of  good  literature,  —  a  very  considerable 
amount  of  which  is  being  written  to-day  all  over 
the  world,  —  we  must  pick  and  choose.  We 
should  have  to  live   to   be   a  thousand  years  old 


1 6  THE  QUESTION  OF 

to  read  it  all  or  nearly  all,  and  our  real  concern 
is  with  the  great,  and  with  that  portion  of  the 
delightful,  the  charming,  and  the  good  that  makes 
a  special  appeal  to  us  as  individuals.  It  is  plain 
that  we  must  discover  for  ourselves  this  specially 
appealing  literature,  for  no  one  else  has  precisely 
our  tastes  ;  but  we  may,  of  course,  be  aided  by 
wide  reading  in  criticism,  and  by  using  the  other 
instrumentalities  of  culture. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  there  are  other 
classes  of  books,  or  rather  that  the  term  "  good 
literature "  may  be  resolved  into  various  classes. 
One  book  is  interesting,  because  the  main  fact 
of  which  we  are  conscious  when  we  put  it  down 
is  that  it  held  our  attention  remarkably  well.  We 
read  on  and  on  to  see  what  the  end  would  be. 
We  did  not  pause  for  contemplation,  we  felt  no 
rapture,  —  if  we  had,  probably  we  should  have 
pronounced  it  "great"  immediately,  —  but  we 
did  feel  interest,  we  recommended  the  book  to 
our  friends,  and  perhaps  were  among  the  hundred 
thousand  readers  whom  the  jubilant  publisher 
advertised  in  every  conspicuous  place.  Another 
book  is  valuable,  because  we  frequently  make  use 
of  it  or  of  the  ideas  it  contains.  Another  is  agree- 
able, because  it  helps  us  to  while  away  the  time. 


"GREATNESS   IN   LITERATURE"  1 7 

Against  these  books,  when  they  have  not  through 
the  lapse  of  years  become  standard,  it  would  be 
only  a  pessimistic,  almost  an  inhuman,  critic  who 
would  inveigh ;  they  have  become  necessaries  of 
life.  What  would  the  publishers  or  the  literary 
supplements  of  the  newspapers  do  without  them  ? 
But  they  are  either  not  literature  at  all,  or  else  in 
many  cases  lie  outside  the  province  of  the  serious 
critic  or  of  the  teacher  and  student  of  literature. 
That  enigmatical  personage,  the  average  reader, 
is  fully  capable  of  attending  to  them  without 
assistance. 

There  is,  however,  one  further  class  of  compo- 
sitions that  needs  a  word.  There  are  books,  and 
especially  single  poems,  which  it  is  our  first 
impulse  to  call  beautiful.     Are  these  really  great  ? 

We  may  safely  answer,  "  Yes,"  provided  they  are 
truly  and  more  or  less  completely  beautiful,  and 
provided  the  beauty  is  pure  and  elemental. 
Keats's  line  will  help  us  here,  "  A  thing  of  beauty 
is  a  joy  forever."  An  eternal  joy  is  bound,  unless 
there  is  something  the  matter  with  us,  to  produce 
in  us  large,  permanent,  important,  and  unique 
emotions.  Thus  it  is  that  many  of  the  poems  of 
Keats  himself  are  great  poems  in  a  true  sense, — 
although  they  may  seem  at  first  thought  to  lie  out- 


1 8  THE   QUESTION   OF 

side  the  sphere  of  our  normal  life,  and  thus  to 
lack  vitality.  As  their  loveliness  takes  possession 
of  us,  it  energizes  our  souls,  perhaps  just  as  much, 
in  the  case  of  many  of  us,  as  the  more  obvious 
power  and  passion  and  contagious  optimism  of 
Browning  do.  But  if  the  work  is  merely  beautiful 
in  parts,  not  as  a  whole,  —  if  it  is  the  so-called 
purple  passages  that  affect  us,  —  then  it  is  no 
more  great  than  a  picture  of  a  woman  is  great, 
merely  because  the  painter  has  succeeded  in 
giving  her  a  pair  of  beautiful  eyes.  And  if  we 
suspect  that  the  poem  or  book  is  merely  pretty,  if 
it  leaves  us  with  a  sense  of  placid  contentment,  we 
may  be  very  sure  that  it  is  not  great  for  us. 
Some  of  Longfellow's  poetry  appears,  as  we 
advance  in  culture,  to  produce  fainter  impressions 
upon  us  than  it  did  upon  our  fathers  and  mothers, 
—  which  is  perhaps  the  chief  reason  why  we  are 
hearing  so  many  people  assert  that  he  is  not  a 
great  poet.  Personally,  I  think  that  some  in- 
justice is  being  done  to  Longfellow,  but  the  main 
point  here  is  to  understand  why  with  many  readers 
his  work  seems  to  have  lost  ground. 

Now,  while  Longfellow  has  apparently  been 
losing  ground,  another  American  poet,  Edgar 
Allan  Poe,  has   been   gaining  it.     This    leads   us 


"GREATNESS   IN   LITERATURE"  19 

naturally  to  consider  a  question  fully  as  important 
as  that  of  "  greatness  in  literature,"  to  wit,  What 
standards  must  we  apply  in  order  to  determine  the 
relative  greatness  of  writers  ?  After  we  have 
learned  approximately  to  recognize  the  best  litera- 
ture, we  are  almost  inevitably  bound  to  observe 
that,  while  we  may  call  two  books  great,  and 
refrain  from  further  comparison,  we  cannot  in 
most  cases  disguise  the  fact  that  we  find  one 
decidedly  superior  to  the  other,  and  that  thus 
we  pass  to  asking  the  question  which  author  is 
the  greater. 

But  some  critics  and  readers,  notably  the  Im- 
pressionists, object  to  this  emphatically.  Why 
not  be  content,  they  say,  with  the  fact  that  you 
like  this  writer  for  one  reason  and  that  for 
another  ?  Why  run  down  any  one  ?  Why  com- 
pare writers  when  it  is  almost  certain  that  you  do 
not  know  them  equally  well,  and  are  thus  in  con- 
stant danger  of  being  unfair  ?  Why  try  to  meas- 
ure what  is  incommensurable,  since  you  cannot 
measure  so  subtle  a  thing  as  literature,  at  least 
when  it  is  imaginative,  and  you  have  no  inflexible 
standards  ? 

There  is  truth  in  this  point  of  view  so  far  as  it 
involves  a  protest  that  we  should  not  discriminate 


20  THE  QUESTION  OF 

against  one  writer,  because  by  our  standards  we 
find  another  greater.  A  catholic  taste  will  enjoy 
everything  that  is  good.  Our  love  for  Shak- 
spere  and  Milton  need  not  impair  our  affection 
for  Charles  Lamb  and  Goldsmith  and  Irving. 
Great  writers  will  kill  mediocre  or  bad  writers ; 
for  example,  many  people  cannot  read  trashy 
novelists  after  the  masters  of  fiction,  —  but  no 
great  author  ever  really  injures  by  comparison  a 
genuinely  good  one,  who  has  done  well  his  own 
work  no  matter  how  small.  Thus  we  see  from 
the  world's  experience  that  the  attempt  to  rank 
men  of  letters  has  not  annihilated  or  cast  into  the 
shade  the  lesser  authors  who  have  genuine  qualities, 
and  that  the  plea  of  the  Impressionist  against  run- 
ning writers  down  does  not  in  fact  apply  to  us 
when  we  set  up  our  standards  of  measurement. 

But  there  is  a  positive  reason  for  setting  up 
these  standards,  which  the  Impressionist  is  likely 
to  overlook.  It  is  a  law  of  the  human  mind 
and  heart  to  seek  the  best  and  to  pay  it  due 
homage  when  found.  Could  we  check  the 
operations  of  this  law,  we  should  do  much  to 
stop  human  progress,  much  to  sap  the  foun- 
dations of  society.  The  law  is  universal ;  it  is 
seen    in    monarchies    and    republics,    in    politics 


"GREATNESS   IN   LITERATURE"  21 

and  literature;  nay,  more,  is  it  not  the  main- 
spring of  every  religion  ?  The  highest  deserves 
the  utmost  homage,  when,  in  that  highest,  truth, 
beauty,  and  goodness  are  found  in  supreme 
measure.  How  useless,  then,  to  ask  us  to  stop 
applying  our  standards ;  that  is,  to  stop  measuring 
to  determine  the  highest ! 

For  generations  on  generations  men  have 
been  comparing  the  various  arts,  and  on  the 
whole  have  given  the  palm  to  poetry,  for  reasons 
which  may  be  found  in  such  critics  as  Aristotle 
and  Lessing.  All  the  other  arts  have  their 
advocates  and  lovers,  of  course ;  but  thus  far  the 
consensus  of  opinion  seems  to  be  in  favor  of 
poetry,  and  for  the  present  we  can  let  the  ques- 
tion stand  as  if  it  were  settled,  although,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  it  is  anything  but  settled.  Then, 
by  inexorable  law,  men  began  to  classify  poetry, 
and  to  ask  which  kind  of  poetry  is  greatest. 
Here,  again,  there  is  no  unanimity  of  opinion ; 
but  collective  standards,  which  in  these  more  or 
less  general  and  abstruse  subjects  are  the  only  safe 
ones  to  use,  have  put  either  the  poetic  tragedy 
or  the  epic  first,  have  placed  the  impassioned, 
highly  wrought  ode  above  all  other  forms  of 
lyric,  and  have  ranked  the  satire  and  the  didactic 


22  THE   QUESTION  OF 

poem  beneath  the  other  categories  of  poetry. 
This  is  not  saying,  to  be  sure,  that  a  very  good 
satire  may  not  be  better  than  a  mediocre  or  even 
a  fairly  good  ode,  nor  is  it  saying  that  the  kinds 
of  poetry  are  not  frequently  fused,  not  to  say 
confused  —  the  only  point  that  need  be  em- 
phasized here  is  that,  since  the  days  of  the 
Greeks,  there  has  been  what  may  be  called  a 
hierarchy  of  the  literary  species}  —  that  is,  a 
ranking  of  the  kinds  of  literature,  especially  of 
poetry,  —  and  that  if  we  are  to  give  this  up,  we 
must  do  so  for  better  reasons  than  are  advanced 
by  the  critics  who  will  have  none  of  it. 

But  just  as  there  has  been  a  comparison  of  the 
arts  and  of  the  kinds  of  literature,  so  there  has 
been  a  comparison  of  the  artists  and  the  writers. 
The  poets,  for  example,  have  been  compared  and 
ranked  according  to  the  kinds  of  poetry  they 
have  attempted,  and  according  to  the  total  power 
and  value  of  their  work.  Thus,  until  Shakspere 
arose,  Homer  was  regarded  as  not  merely  the 
Father  of  Poets,  but  as,  take    him  all  in  all,  the 

1  Perhaps  the  best  equivalent  we  have  for  the  French  term  genre 
when  it  is  applied  to  literature.  "  Categories,"  which  is  sometimes 
employed  in  this  connection,  does  not  seem  to  be  altogether  satis- 
factory. 


"GREATNESS   IN   LITERATURE"  23 

greatest  of  poets.  Some  of  us  still  think  him 
the  greatest,  but  nearly  all  the  world  has  given 
the  palm  to  Shakspere.  There  is  room,  however, 
in  this  case  as  in  others,  for  the  individual  stand- 
ard to  apply,  because  it  is  generally  admitted  by 
persons  who  know  both  poets  that  they  are  so 
very  great  that  estimating  their  greatness  is 
almost  like  taking  the  altitudes  of  two  tremendous 
mountains  of  nearly  equal  heights.  The  slightest 
deflection  of  the  instrument  may  cause  an  error; 
it  is  permissible,  therefore,  to  take  new  measure- 
ments from  time  to  time.  So  it  is  with  Milton 
and  Dante.  But  merely  because  two  sets  of 
observers  differed  slightly  in  their  measurements 
of  those  two  mountains,  would  be  no  reason  what- 
ever for  inferring  either  that  the  mountains  were 
not  very  high  or  that  the  methods  employed  in 
observing  them  were  without  scientific  value. 
Just  so,  because  there  may  be  some  question 
still  whether  Shakspere  is  greater  than  Homer, 
or  vice  versa, — we  are  assuming,  to  be  sure,  that 
Shakspere  wrote  his  own  plays  and  that  the 
name  "Homer"  does  not  cover  a  multitude  of 
singers,  —  is  no  reason  for  denying  the  proposition 
that  they  are  in  all  probability  the  two  most  mar- 
vellously  endowed    poets    that   ever  lived,  or  for 


24  THE  QUESTION  OF 

holding  that  the  collective   standards   applied   to 
determine  their  unique  greatness   are  valueless. 

But  enough  has  probably  been  said  on  these 
points ;  let  us  turn  to  the  practical  matter  of 
endeavoring  to  determine  how  authors  are  to  be 
ranked  in  the  scale  of  greatness.  One  fact  seems 
settled,  —  it  is  that  there  is  a  small  group  of  what 
are  sometimes  called  world-writers,  —  writers, 
chiefly  poets,  supremely  great ;  who  are  read  in 
nearly  every  land  and  in  some  cases  have  been 
so  read  almost  since  they  wrote ;  who  are  sepa- 
rated in  point  of  genius  by  a  wide  chasm  from 
all  other  authors.  The  writers  of  universal 
genius  we  may  call  them,  although  supreme 
writers  is,  probably,  a  better  designation.  They 
are  very  few  in  number;  Homer,  Sophocles, 
Virgil,  Dante,  Shakspere,  Milton,  Goethe,  nearly 
exhaust  the  list.  Moliere,  however,  should  be 
added  because  he  represents  the  comedy  of 
manners  so  marvellously,  and  we  should  doubt- 
less include  Cervantes  and  a  few  others.  It  is 
clear  that  the  authors  named  are  supreme  in 
their  excellence,  and  it  is  also  obvious  that 
they  have  no  living  peers.  In  fact,  there  are 
scarcely  more  than  three  recent  writers  known 
to  us  who  seem  possibly  entitled  to  such  a  high 


"GREATNESS   IN   LITERATURE"  25 

rank,  and  they  are  Scott,  Victor  Hugo,  and  Balzac, 
about  whom  the  critics  are  still  arguing  pro  and 
con. 

Below  these  masters,  yet  far  above  the  majority 
even  of  authors  to  whom  the  term  "  great "  is 
freely  applied,  comes  a  small  group  of  writers  of 
very  eminent  originality  and  power,  of  great 
reputation  outside  their  own  nationalities,  but 
still  not  universal  in  their  genius,  nor  so  dazzling 
in  their  achievements  as  the  supreme  or  world 
writers.  This  group  is  often  not  separated  from 
the  classes  above  it  and  below  it ;  hence  there 
is  no  classification  for  it  that  is  accepted 
everywhere.  It  will  not  do  to  apply  Mr.  Swin- 
burne's suggestive  division  of  poets  as  gods  and 
giants,  because,  while  it  is  fairly  easy  to  recognize 
a  giant,  the  gleaming  presence  of  some  divinities, 
especially  of  Mr.  Swinburne's  own,  is  occasionally 
hidden  from  mortal  eyes.  Then,  again,  there  are 
semi-divinities ;  indeed,  there  is  no  telling  how 
minutely  the  divine  essence  may  be  parcelled  out. 
In  the  case  of  the  men  of  letters  we  are  now 
discussing  it  might  be  permissible  to  call  them 
the  dii  minores,  —  the  minor  divinities  of  literature, 
if  we  chose  to  call  the  world-writers  the  dii 
majores,  —  the  major   divinities  of  literature;  em- 


26  THE  QUESTION   OF 

phasis  being  laid  on  the  fact  that  they  differ 
from  all  authors  below  them  in  fairly  seeming 
to  surpass  in  their  power  and  influence  what 
merely  great  writers  might  be  expected  to  accom- 
plish. This  implies,  it  is  true,  a  somewhat  stable 
standard  of  level  greatness,  a  point  which  we 
shall  discuss  in  a  moment,  and  there  is  probably 
no  need  at  this  late  day  of  taking  refuge  in  such 
an  undefinable  term  as  "divinities."  It  is,  per- 
haps, better  to  distinguish  this  class  as  that  of  the 
very  great  writers.  Into  it  would  seem  to  fall 
such  poets  as  Pindar  in  Greek,  Lucretius  in 
Latin,  Petrarch,  Tasso,  and  Ariosto  in  Italian, 
Chaucer  and  Spenser  in  English,  Schiller  and 
Heine  in  German.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  some 
critics,  desiring  to  give  the  French  a  place  in 
the  list,  would  insert  the  name  of  Victor  Hugo; 
but,  as  we  have  just  seen,  he  is  a  candidate  for 
higher  honors,  and  personally  I  should  unhesitat- 
ingly assign  those  same  higher  honors  to  Voltaire 
for  his  excellence  in  prose  and  verse  combined. 
But  whatever  we  may  say  of  French  poets, 
there  are  at  least  two  masters  of  French  prose 
who  seem  very  great,  —  Rabelais  and  Montaigne, 
—  and  to  balance  them  we  may  name  two  very 
great    British    prose  writers,    Swift    and    Gibbon. 


"GREATNESS  IN  LITERATURE"        27 

But  we  must  be  tentative  in  our  illustrations, 
for  there  is  little  unanimity  among  the  critics, 
as  may  be  seen  by  comparing  the  rank  given 
Chaucer  by  Matthew  Arnold  with  that  given  him, 
let  us  say,  by  Professor  Lounsbury.  Not  a  few 
of  us  would  doubtless  like  to  assert  emphatically 
the  supreme  position  of  the  author  of  "The 
Canterbury  Tales  " ;  but,  while  his  merits  are  being 
more  and  more  acknowledged  by  foreign  scholars, 
it  may  be  questioned  whether  he  has  even  yet 
attained  a  truly  cosmopolitan  fame. 

Immediately  below  these  very  great  writers 
comes  a  class  which  is  plainly  great,  yet  also 
plainly  not  supremely  great,  sometimes  not  great 
enough  to  be  well  known  outside  of  their  respec- 
tive countries,  but  cherished  by  their  countrymen 
as  national  glories.  These  are  the  authors  one 
would  never  think  of  calling  supreme,  although 
one  would  as  little  think  of  calling  them  minor. 
We  may  call  them,  as  is  usual,  simply  "great 
writers  "  ;  for  if  we  speak  of  them  as  constituting  a 
"second  class,"  as  is  sometimes  done,  we  ignore  the 
real  distinction  between  them  and  the  very  great 
writers  of  whom  mention  has  just  been  made.  Of 
these  really,  but  not  supremely,  or  very  great, 
authors  every  nation  that  has  an  important  litera- 


28  THE   QUESTION   OF 

ture  can  point  to  several.  No  attempt  at  enumera- 
tion is  here  demanded,  but  we  may  be  reasonably 
sure  that  both  Catullus  and  Horace  belong  to  the 
Roman  list  and  Leopardi  to  the  Italian.  In  Eng- 
lish we  have  in  this  class  such  poets  as  Marlowe, 
Ben  Jonson,  Dryden,  probably  Pope  and  perhaps 
Gray,  Burns,  Coleridge,  Keats,  very  probably 
Tennyson  and  Robert  Browning,  as  well  as  Words- 
worth, Byron,  and  Shelley,  unless  the  partisans  of 
the  last  group  succeed  in  elevating  one  or  more  of 
them  into  the  class  of  the  very  great  poets.  The 
reason  one  cannot  speak  more  definitely  is  mainly 
to  be  found  in  the  facts  that  not  even  yet  have  we 
settled  the  places  of  the  eighteenth-century  poets, 
and  that  the  critics  have  too  often  spent  their  time 
in  anathematizing  one  another  instead  of  attending 
to  their  real  business  of  attempting  to  reach  such 
a  consensus  of  opinion  with  regard  to  our  classic 
authors  as  would  correspond  with,  let  us  say,  the 
consensus  more  or  less  obtaining  in  France.  Still, 
scarcely  any  critic  denies  the  existence  of  this  class 
of  great  but  not  greatest  writers,  and  the  places  of 
a  majority  of  the  names  given  are  probably  secure. 
This  is  enough  for  us,  nor  need  we  add  the  names 
of  many  corresponding  masters  of  prose.  Those 
of  Charles  Lamb  and  Hazlitt  and  Hawthorne  will 
be  sufficient. 


"GREATNESS   IN   LITERATURE"  29 

As  for  the  rest  of  the  writers  of  a  nation,  for  we 
have  passed  from  the  sphere  of  the  cosmopolitan 
authors,  critical  usage  is  perplexingly  various. 
Some  critics  have  two  or  three  classes,  especially  of 
poets,  and  speak  of  Dryden  or  Ben  Jonson  as  the 
head  of  the  second  class.  Some  talk  indefinitely  of 
third  and  fourth  classes.  Some  use  the  qualifying 
epithet  "  minor."  In  the  midst  of  this  confusion, 
which  often  puzzles  students,  and  presumably  gen- 
eral readers  also,  it  may  not  be  presumptuous  to 
hazard  the  suggestion,  —  which  harmonizes  in  part 
with  a  remark  made  by  Sainte-Beuve  to  Matthew 
Arnold,  —  that  it  might  be  well  to  divide  all  worthy 
authors  who  fall  below  the  class  universally  or 
usually  called  great  into  two  classes  as  follows :  — 

First,  important  writers,  —  writers  who  have  not 
power  and  range  enough  to  be  called  great,  al- 
though they  often  have  a  considerable  range  and 
have  written  some  poetry,  or  a  book  or  two,  that 
may  fairly  be  regarded  as  great ;  —  writers  whom 
most  of  us  will  want  to  read  in  whole  or  in  part 
because  their  genius,  within  well-defined  limits,  is 
genuine,  and  because  they  stand  for  something 
important  in  culture  and  in  the  history  of  litera- 
ture and  are  also  likely  to  interest  in  and  for  them- 
selves.    The  poet  William  Collins  will  serve  as  an 


3<D  THE  QUESTION   OF 

example.  He  did  not  write  enough  to  be  called 
great ;  his  range  of  powers  was  not  sufficiently 
wide ;  but  he  is  regarded  by  those  who  know  his 
work  as  a  thoroughly  genuine  poet ;  he  composed 
several  poems  like  the  "  Ode  to  Evening  "  that  are 
truly  classic ;  and  he  is  important  because  with 
Gray  he  helped  to  inaugurate  the  romantic  move- 
ment among  the  eighteenth-century  poets.  To  call 
Collins  "  minor "  would  be  misleading,  yet  he  is 
not  great.  He  is,  however,  important,  as  is  also, 
for  example,  in  the  realms  of  prose  fiction,  or  at 
least  of  American  fiction,  our  own  first  novelist, 
Charles  Brockden  Brown.  To  this  class  would 
probably  belong  those  authors  of  large  endeavor 
who  with  a  little  more  genius  or  under  more  favor- 
able circumstances,  might  have  been  indisputably 
great ;  such  a  man  of  letters,  for  example,  as  Robert 
Southey. 

Secondly,  the  minor  writers,  —  a  class  which 
should  consist  of  writers  of  genuine  quality,  but  of 
no  conspicuous  excellence,  —  poets,  for  instance, 
who  are  not  mere  versifiers,  novelists  who  are  not 
mere  manufacturers  of  salable  fiction,  —  authors 
in  whose  works  any  lover  of  books  would  be  likely 
to  find  things  well  worth  reading,  but  who  might 
be  neglected  with  no  great  loss.     In  other  words, 


"GREATNESS   IN   LITERATURE"  3  I 

our  class  of  minor  writers  should  include  those 
whom,  without  being  impelled  to  blush  at  owning 
the  fact,  we  might  never  find  time  to  read,  but 
who  make  a  genuine  appeal  to  many  persons,  and 
sometimes  a  strong  appeal  to  a  small  class  of 
readers.  Such  authors  are  very  numerous  and  are 
sure  to  be  increasingly  numerous  in  the  future,  in 
view  of  the  fact  that  so  many  men  and  women 
have  become  fairly  equipped  for  the  profession  of 
letters.  If  concrete  examples  are  needed,  we  may 
cite  such  a  poet  as  the  late  Mr.  Aubrey  De  Vere 
and  such  a  novelist  as  Henry  Kingsley.  It  should 
be  remembered,  however,  that  a  minor  or  an  occa- 
sional poet  whose  entire  works  we  need  not  read, 
may  write  a  poem  we  should  all  do  well  to  read. 
Perhaps  the  name  of  the  Rev.  Charles  Wolfe 
means  nothing  to  most  of  us,  but  we  do  remember 
his 

"  Not  a  drum  was  heard,  not  a  funeral  note." 

It  is  superfluous  to  add  that  below  our  minor 
writers  fall  the  versifiers,  the  scribblers,  the 
authors  who  won  applause  for  a  day,  but  were 
soon  forgotten,  and  need  not  be  revived.  For 
these  no  classification  is  required  here. 

We  do  require,  however,  some  practical  tests  to 
enable  us  to  separate  and  place  authors  for  our- 


32  THE   QUESTION   OF 

selves.  I  think  that  in  the  description  or  defini- 
tion of  what  I  proposed  to  call  the  important 
and  the  minor  writers,  tests  will  be  found  for 
determining  who  should  belong  to  these  classes; 
but,  after  all,  our  main  concern  is  with  the 
greatest  and  the  great,  and  we  can  leave  the 
lesser  authors  to  one  side.  Are  there  any  tests 
by  which  the  greatest  masters  can  be  set  apart; 
that  is,  tests  other  than  that  of  universal  consent  ? 
There  seem  to  be. 

If  we  examine  the  works  of  the  supreme  or 
world-writers,  we  shall  find  that  they  have  many 
of  their  wonderful  characteristics  in  common. 

Their  art,  their  technic  is  nearly  always  high 
and  uniform.  We  may  open  any  page  at  ran- 
dom and  we  shall  discover  some  evidence  — 
whether  a  noble  line  —  or  a  passage  of  supreme 
metrical  power  and  beauty  —  or  marvellous  turns 
of  expression  or  command  of  language  —  some- 
thing that  makes  us  exclaim,  Here  is  a  great 
artist !  .  In  other  words,  the  style  of  the  world- 
poet  rarely  flags.  This  is  not  true  of  most 
of  the  merely  great  poets;  it  is  not  true,  for 
instance,  of  Wordsworth,  or  Byron,  and,  where 
it  is  in  the  main  true,  as  with  Tennyson,  there 
is   some   unevenness   of   matter,    some   deficiency 


"GREATNESS   IN   LITERATURE"  33 

of  poetic  energy,  that  counterbalances  the  per- 
fection of  style. 

In  the  second  place,  the  genius  of  none  of 
these  supreme  writers  seems  cramped ;  their 
power  is  sovereign  and  sustained ;  their  range 
is  either  universal  or  very  lofty.  Homer,  for 
example,  and  Shakspere  seem  to  set  every 
phase  of  life  and  character  before  us.  They  do 
not  really  do  this,  but  they  seem  to  do  it.  Milton 
and  Dante,  on  the  other  hand,  make  up  for  their 
lack  of  this  universality  by  being  able  to  rise  to 
sublime  heights  and  to  maintain  their  elevation. 
They  penetrate  heaven  itself.  Goethe  appears 
to  be  universal  in  his  knowledge  of  life  and  art, 
and  he  succeeds  in  almost  every  form  of  litera- 
ture. Balzac's  acquaintance  with  human  nature 
seems  portentously  wide  and  deep.  These  things 
are  not  true  of  the  merely  great  authors.  On 
their  own  ground  they  may  be  great,  nay,  su- 
preme; but  off  it  their  genius  flags.  Words- 
worth, for  instance,  is  almost  unrivalled  as  a 
nature  and  a  reflective  poet,  but  he  had  no  dra- 
matic genius,  little  humor,  and  slight  sympathy 
with  many  phases  of  life. 

In  the  third  place,  each  of  these  supreme 
writers   has    achieved   a   long,    sustained   master- 


34  THE   QUESTION   OF 

piece,  or  a  number  of  masterpieces.  The  "  Iliad," 
the  "Odyssey,"  the  "  CEdipus  Rex,"  the  "  JEneid," 
the  "  Divine  Comedy,"  "  Othello,"  "  Hamlet,"  and 
"Lear,"  "Paradise  Lost,"  "Faust,"  —  at  once  rise 
before  us.  The  great  writers,  on  the  other  hand, 
when  poets,  rarely  succeed  when  they  attempt 
long  masterpieces,  and,  when  novelists,  rarely 
give  us  a  series  of  genuine  masterpieces.  Words- 
worth's "  Excursion,"  Shelley's  "  Revolt  of  Islam  " 
and  "  Prometheus  Unbound,"  Tennyson's  "  Idylls," 
Browning's  "Ring  and  the  Book,"  —  are  either 
acknowledged  failures  as  wholes  or  else  have  so 
many  critics  and  readers  against  them  that  the 
question  of  their  eminent  greatness  remains  un- 
decided. But  the  world-writer  has  his  practically 
undisputed  masterpiece,  although  he  may  have 
much  besides.  So,  also,  the  very  great  writers 
like  Spenser  have  their  undisputed  masterpieces, 
but  these  authors,  as  we  have  seen,  lack  some 
of  the  characteristics  of  the  world  or  supreme 
writers. 

In  the  fourth  place,  the  world-writer,  as  his 
name  implies,  has  conquered  the  civilized  world. 
Whether  he  is  read  or  not,  his  name  is  widely 
known,  and  his  place  is  yielded  him  ungrudgingly. 
Milton  is  not  very  generally  read,  but  his  place  is 


"GREATNESS   IN   LITERATURE"  35 

secure,  and  if  his  name  were  mentioned  to  a  culti- 
vated Frenchman,  the  latter  would  know  some- 
thing about  him.  The  Italians,  on  the  other  hand, 
know  very  little  about  Wordsworth,  while  we  do 
know  not  a  little  about  Dante.  Most  of  us  do 
not  know  Leconte  de  Lisle,  but  the  Frenchman, 
while  he  does  know  Poe,  retaliates  by  knowing 
practically  nothing  about  Bryant.  As  the  world 
is  drawn  closer  together,  this  test  of  cosmopolitan 
fame  may  cease  to  mean  very  much  j1  but  at  present 
it  is  only  supremely  great  authors,  or  exceptional 
ones  like  Byron  and  Poe,  who  acquire  really  world- 
wide fame,  and  the  test  is  useful. 

Our  fifth  and  last  test  is  one  that  applies  also  to 
the  other  classes  of  writers,  —  the  test  of  duration 
of  fame.  But  in  the  case  of  the  genuine  world- 
writers  a  longer  period  of  probation  is  normally 
required.  Victor  Hugo,  to  use  an  example  already 
given,  is  probably  a  very  great  poet ;  but  it  will  be 
some  years,  perhaps  some  generations,  before  it 
will  be  definitely  known  whether  or  not  he  has 
risen  to  the  dignity  of  being  a  world-poet. 

1Note  in  this  connection  the  increasing  number  of  important 
French  studies  of  British  and  American  writers.  Two  elaborate 
volumes,  one  dealing  with  Poe  and  one  with  Hawthorne,  have 
appeared  in  the  past  few  months. 


36  THE   QUESTION   OF 

There  are  obviously  other  tests  that  might  be 
applied,  but  they  are  less  concrete.  World-writers 
are  generally  marked  by  supreme  qualities  in 
every  respect,  —  supreme  imagination,  supreme 
range  and  copiousness  of  creative  power,  supreme 
command  of  language  and  rhythm,  supreme  seri- 
ousness and  splendor  of  thought 

It  would  seem  plain,  in  conclusion,  that  if  we 
apply  these  tests,  we  ought  to  be  able  to  tell 
quickly  whether  any  given  writer  is  worthy  of 
the  highest  praise,  and  that  we  ought  to  make 
it  almost  a  matter  of  duty  not  to  indulge  in 
hyperbolic  laudation  of  any  save  the  noblest 
authors. 

A  few  words  remain  to  be  said  about  tests  that 
may  be  applied  to  writers  just  below  the  highest 
rank,  —  to  the  writers  I  have  proposed  to  denomi- 
nate "very  great."  This,  as  we  have  seen,  is  a 
perplexing  problem;  but,  if  we  will  lay  hold  of  the 
masterpiece  test,  it  may  help  us.  Any  writer  who 
has  a  long  masterpiece  or,  in  the  case  of  prose,  a 
series  of  books  pronounced  admirable  by  succes- 
sive generations  in  his  own  country,  and  respected 
by  competent  critics  abroad,  seems  entitled  to 
rank  among  the  very  great  writers,  —  the  dii 
minores    of    literature.      Thus,    Spenser,    Tasso, 


"GREATNESS   IN   LITERATURE"  37 

Ariosto,  and  their  peers  belong  to  this  class, 
and  so,  also,  do  novelists  like  Fielding.  It  is 
clear  that  none  of  these  writers  is  characterized 
by  universality  of  genius  as  Homer,  Shakspere, 
Goethe  are,  nor  by  sublimity  as  Dante  and  Milton 
are ;  nor  do  any  of  them  completely  fulfil  any  of 
the  other  tests  just  given,  although  all  do  partially 
fulfil  them.  This  class  includes  also,  however, 
writers  who  have  not  a  long  masterpiece  to  their 
credit,  but  who  can  substitute  for  it  a  body  of 
work  of  sufficient  power,  uniformity  of  merit, 
and  important  influence  to  be  fairly  equivalent 
to  a  masterpiece.  The  sonnets  and  canzoni  of 
Petrarch,  the  lyrics  of  Heine,  seem  to  entitle 
them  to  rank  with  or  very  near  the  writers  of 
sustained  and  indubitable  masterpieces.  Thus 
we  perceive  that  the  fundamental  test,  both  for 
the  supreme  writers  and  for  the  very  great 
writers  immediately  below  them,  is  excellence 
of  sustained  achievement. 

Finally,  as  to  the  class  of  great  writers,  who 
are  in  the  main  of  national  importance  only,  we 
observe  that  they  are  separated  from  the  classes 
above  them  by  one  fact,  at  least.  They  have  no 
undisputed  masterpiece,  —  indeed,  they  are  gener- 
ally marked  by  having  an  attempted  masterpiece 


38  THE  QUESTION  OF 

which,  on  the  whole,  is  a  failure  or  only  fairly 
good,  —  nor  have  they  a  body  of  work  of  uni- 
form and  very  high  excellence.  Wordsworth, 
for  instance,  has  his  "  Excursion  "  and  "  Prelude," 
when,  if  he  is  to  rank  with  Spenser,  he  ought  to 
have  something  equivalent  in  both  style  and  sub- 
stance to  the  "Faerie  Oueene."  He  has  in  the 
body  of  his  poetry  poems  like  "The  Idiot  Boy," 
and  "  Vaudracour  and  Julia,"  to  offset  the  "  Ode 
to  Duty "  ;  he  has  not  left  a  body  of  poetry 
marked  by  uniform  excellence  in  its  kind,  such 
as  the  sonnets  of  Petrarch.  He  has  ups  and 
downs,  and  while  his  completely  successful  poems 
and  passages  are  probably  better  than  anything 
in  Petrarch,  his  conspicuous  failures  more  than 
neutralize  this  advantage,  and  they  have  limited 
his  influence.  But  is  not  this  another  way  of 
saying  that  Wordsworth  and  writers  of  his  class 
often  lack  the  power  of  self-criticism?  They 
leave  us  mixed  work,  because  they  cannot  criti- 
cise themselves  and  cut  out  the  poor  work.  This 
seems  to  be  a  good  test  by  which  to  separate  these 
poets  from  their  superiors.  A  Spenser  almost 
invariably  appears  to  have  well  in  mind  the  essen- 
tial principles  and  rules  of  his  craft;  a  Words- 
worth, a  Browning,  an  Emerson,  does  not. 


"  GREATNESS   IN   LITERATURE"  39 

It  is  less  easy  to  separate  the  great  writers 
from  those  whom  we  may  call  merely  important. 
The  critics  are  at  sea  in  the  matter,  but  there 
are  one  or  two  tests  that  seem  applicable.  The 
great  writer  is  supreme  or  nearly  so  on  his  own 
special  ground,  in  his  peculiar  line  —  at  least 
when  he  is  at  his  best,  and  when  his  special 
line  makes  a  genuine  and  wide  appeal.  Further- 
more, in  most  cases,  he  has  energy  and  versatility 
enough  to  try  other  lines  of  work,  in  some  of 
which  he  achieves  partial  success.  The  merely 
important  writer,  on  the  other  hand,  is  not  su- 
preme in  any  broad  or  really  noteworthy  sphere. 
Wordsworth  is  confessedly  supreme  as  nature 
poet,  but  he  also  achieves  success  in  reflective 
lyrics  dealing  with  human  life,  and  in  classical 
themes.  Byron  is  supreme  as  a  poet  of  revolt, 
Browning  as  a  courageous  optimist,  Keats  as  an 
apostle  of  pure  beauty.  But  Collins  and  other 
important  writers  are  either  not  supreme  in  any- 
thing, or  else,  as  in  the  case  of  Thomas  Campbell, 
are  supreme  only  in  a  rather  narrow  class  of  com- 
positions ;  in  Campbell's  case,  in  battle  lyrics. 
Campbell's  "  Hohenlinden "  and  "Battle  of  the 
Baltic  "  are  fine  things ;  yet  for  two  generations 
probably  no  one  has  thought  that  they  may  fairly 


4<D  THE   QUESTION   OF 

be  set   over   against  Wordsworth's  supreme    suc- 
cesses as  a  nature  poet. 

But  there  is  a  limit  to  human  endurance,  and 
a  time  or  space  limit  ought  to  be  set  to  all  theo- 
rizers.  In  view  of  these  facts  let  me  summarize 
the  points  I  have  tried  to  make.  I  have  tried 
to  show  that  it  is  proper  to  apply  standards  in 
order  to  answer  questions  relating  to  approxi- 
mately absolute  and  relative  "  greatness  in  litera- 
ture," and  that,  whatever  else  "  greatness  in 
literature "  may  mean,  the  truly  great  book  or 
writer  must  do  something  with  us  that  is  large, 
important,  influential,  permanent,  original,  and 
unique,  and  must  do  it  either  in  the  sphere  of 
our  emotions  or  in  that  of  our  intelligence,  or 
in  both.  I  have  tried  to  show  also  that  the 
universal  tendency  to  rank  writers  and  the  forms 
of  literature  is  founded  on  a  law  of  our  nature, 
and  that  the  application  of  collective  standards 
of  judgment  will  enable  us  to  classify  authors 
in  a  useful  and  not  too  arbitrary  way.  I  have 
tried  to  show  that  writers  worthy  of  attention 
may  be  conveniently  divided  according  as  they 
are  supreme,  very  great,  great,  important,  and 
minor.  I  have  distinguished  these  classes  from 
one  another,  and  have  endeavored  to  give    prac- 


"GREATNESS   IN   LITERATURE"  41 

tical    tests    by    which    any   reader   may   at    least 
begin  to  discriminate  in  his  reading. 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  insist  that  all  that  has 
been  said  is  intended  to  be  suggestive  merely. 
Even  if  the  classification  attempted  has  been  made 
on  correct  lines,  it  needs  filling  out  and  requires 
many  qualifications.  There  are  writers  who  can 
only  with  difficulty  be  classified  under  this  or  any 
other  scheme.  Is  Herrick,  for  instance,  a  great 
or  only  an  important  poet?  Then,  again,  by  the 
classification  here  suggested,  a  writer  might  be 
put  in  a  rather  high  class,  yet  certain  obvious 
defects  might  make  it  very  questionable  whether 
his  rank  ought  not  to  be  reduced.  And  we  must 
always  remember  that  any  scheme  of  classification 
is  bad  if  it  tends  to  make  our  judgments  hard  and 
fast,  if  it  induces  us  to  think  that  we  can  stick  a 
pin  through  a  writer  and  ticket  him  as'  an  en- 
tomologist does  an  insect.1     But  if  we  use  such  a 

1  See  in  this  connection  the  curious  essay  on  "The  Balance  of 
the  Poets "  by  Mark  Akenside,  based  on  a  French  attempt  to 
"  balance  "  the  painters.  On  a  scale  of  twenty  he  marked  Ariosto, 
Dante,  Horace,  Pindar,  Pope,  Racine,  and  Sophocles  thirteen; 
that  is,  five  below  the  marks  assigned  to  Homer  and  Shakspere. 
This  particular  exercise  of  the  "  Pleasures  of  the  Imagination " 
may  be  found  in  the  New  Brunswick  (New  Jersey)  edition  of 
Akenside,  1808. 


42       QUESTION  OF  "GREATNESS  IN  LITERATURE" 

scheme  intelligently,  it  may  prove  useful,  if  only 
by  stimulating  us  to  candid  objections,  for  can- 
did objections  imply  honest  thought,  and  honest 
thought  on  such  a  noble  subject  as  literature  can- 
not but  be  beneficial.  On  the  other  hand,  if  any 
one  finds  that  ranking  and  weighing  authors  and 
books  tends  to  diminish  his  enjoyment  of  them, 
he  may  safely  relegate  discussions  like  the  present 
to  any  sort  of  limbo  he  pleases,  provided  he  does 
not  intolerantly  insist,  as  some  good  people  are 
too  likely  to  do,  that  his  way  of  approaching 
literature  is  the  only  one  permitted  to  rational 
mortals. 


II 

A   WORD    FOR   THE   SMALLER 
AUTHORS  AND  FOR  POPU- 
LAR  JUDGMENT 


[The  substance  of  two  short  papers  contributed  to   The 
Churchman  for  December  4  and  18,  1897.] 


II 

A    WORD    FOR    THE   SMALLER 
AUTHORS  AND  FOR  POPU- 
LAR  JUDGMENT 

I  trust  that  in  the  preceding  paper  I  have  suf- 
ficiently guarded  myself  against  any  imputation 
that  I  consider  literature  as  something  that  can 
be  accurately  measured  by  hard  and  fast  rules. 
I  really  do  not  think  that  there  is  any  instrument 
by  which  one  can  tell  the  amount  of  greatness  in 
a  particular  book  with  the  ease  and  certainty  with 
which  one  can  tell  the  number  of  degrees  to  which 
steam  has  heated  our  deadly  offices  and  apart- 
ments. Nor  do  I  actually  range  authors  on  my 
shelves  according  to  their  size  as  though  they 
were  bushel,  peck,  quart,  and  pint  measures. 
But,  although  I  may  not  have  left  any  such  im- 
pression, I  may  very  possibly  have  failed  to 
say  enough  on  two  points  closely  related  to  the 
discussion  just  ended  —  if,  indeed,  any  such  dis- 
cussion ever  is  ended.  I  have  not  dwelt  suffi- 
ciently on    the   uses   of    the   "smaller"    authors, 

45 


46  A   WORD   FOR  THE   SMALLER   AUTHORS 

whether,  adopting  the  classification  I  have  sug- 
gested, we  call  them  "  important  "  or  "  minor  "  ; 
and  I  have  not  said  enough  in  regard  to  the 
adequacy,  within  certain  limits,  of  popular  judg- 
ment in  matters  literary  and  artistic.  On  these 
two  points  I  should  like  to  dwell  for  a  moment. 

I.    Smaller  Authors  and  their  Uses 

It  is  surely  good  advice  that  our  great  critics 
bestow,  when  they  tell  us,  as  they  all  do,  that  we 
should  live  with  the  classics.  That  is,  of  course, 
what  we  mean  to  do,  but  it  is  emphatically  what 
the  majority  of  us  fail  to  do  for  the  whole  or  the 
greater  portion  of  our  lives.  Some  of  us,  although 
we  may  legitimately  call  ourselves  readers,  do  not 
pretend  to  do  more  than  glance  through  a  few 
standard  authors  and  read  a  few  essays  or  books 
about  them.  Others  of  us  are  glad  if  we  can  say 
that  we  have  read  through  once  the  chief  poets 
and  some  of  the  great  prose  writers  of  the  litera- 
tures to  which  we  have  access.  A  few  of  us  en- 
deavor to  keep  up  fairly  well  with  contemporary 
books  and  writers  and  at  the  same  time  to  reread 
now  and  then  a  standard  author.  An  almost  infini- 
tesimal fraction  of  us  obeys  the  critical  mandate, 
and  lives,  even  in  part,  with  the  classics. 


AND   FOR   POPULAR   JUDGMENT  47 

This  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  so  much  as  it  is 
to  be  deplored.  Contemporary  literature  has  the 
potent  voice  of  fashion  on  its  side.  It  has,  too, 
the  siren  voice  of  discovery,  of  appropriation. 
The  classics  belong  to  every  one ;  few  or  no  stand- 
ard authors  can  be  appropriated  except  after  years 
of  patient  labor.  A  contemporary  writer  is  always 
more  or  less  in  need  of  a  prophet,  a  herald,  an 
interpreter.  Then,  again,  although  the  true  classics 
exist  for  all  men  and  all  times,  it  is  hard  to  per- 
suade ourselves  that  they  are  as  modern,  as  "  up-to- 
date  "  as  Mr.  Hardy's  last  novel1  or  Mr.  Kipling's 
last  volume  of  poems.  Whether  it  be  true  or  not, 
we  at  least  imagine  that  the  classics  require  more 
intellectual  effort  on  our  part  for  their  proper 
understanding  and  appreciation  than  is  necessary 
in  the  case  of  the  latest  novel  or  biography  of 
which  we  have  read  a  review.  In  fine,  the  recent 
novel  comes  to  us ;  we  have  to  go  to  the  classics. 
Hence  it  is  that  we  cut  new  pages  instead  of  add- 
ing thumb-marks  to  old  ones  ;  and  hence  it  is  that 
some  of  us  are  even  heterodox  enough  to  smile 
when  critics  preach  the  classics  to  us.    Fortunately, 

1  When  these  words  were  written,  it  was  still  possible  to  speak  of 
Mr.  Hardy's  last  novel  as  one  that  would  soon  be  his  next  to  the 
last. 


48  A   WORD   FOR  THE   SMALLER   AUTHORS 

or  unfortunately,  not  many  of  us  are  yet  sufficiently 
bold  to  enter  with  Mr.  Howells  and  Mr.  Garland 
upon  a  veritable  "battle  of  the  books  "  and  to  bear 
a  lance  against  the  redoubtable  champions  of  the 
looming  past.1 

If  all  this  be  true,  it  would  seem  that  it  is  a 
work  of  supererogation  to  plead  the  cause  of  the 
writers  whom  we  designate  as  "  smaller."  If  the 
classics  fail  to  receive  proper  recognition,  of  what 
avail  will  it  be  to  call  attention  to  the  subtle  beau- 
ties of  any  minor  poet  that  sleeps  in  the  dust  of  a 
graveyard  or  a  library  ?  If  contemporary  literature 
already  has  the  upper  hand,  is  not  the  minor  poet 
of  the  "  living  present "  thoroughly  able  to  take 
care  of  himself  ?  In  view  of  this  dilemma,  it  would 
seem  that  no  one  could  seriously  undertake  to  dis- 
cuss minor  poets,  taken  either  separately  or  col- 
lectively, unless  he  were  one  of  those  specialists  so 
common  now  whose  main  excuse  for  writing  is, 
not  that  their  subject  is  worth  knowing,  but  that 
it  is  so  little  known. 

Dilemmas,  however,  are  not  always  such  dan- 
gerous forks  to  the  writer  who  loves  his  theme  as 

1I  had  in  mind  "Criticism  and  Fiction"  and  "Crumbling 
Idols."  Romance  still  clings  to  the  idols,  which  still  stand  firmly 
on  their  pedestals. 


AND   FOR   POPULAR  JUDGMENT  49 

those  of  Caudium  were  to  the  Roman  legionaries. 
Logic  has  been  known  to  go  down  before  volu- 
bility, and  it  is  always  possible  to  restate  proposi- 
tions in  such  a  way  as  to  lead  imperceptibly  to 
conclusions  quite  different  from  those  formerly 
reached.  Perhaps,  after  all,  when  the  great  critics 
tell  us  we  must  live  with  the  classics,  their  in- 
junction is  not  to  be  taken  as  a  universal  impera- 
tive. Granted  that  we  had  the  time  and  the 
inclination,  would  it  be  possible  for  us  to  live  al- 
ways with  the  classics  without  experiencing  some 
of  the  effects  of  ennui,  not  to  say  repulsion  ?  With 
the  exception  of  the  two  universal  poets,  Shak- 
spere  and  Homer,  if  even  they  are  to  be  excepted, 
could  we  find  in  the  classics  an  answer  to  our 
every  mood?  Hardly,  if  we  mean  by  the  classics 
the  more  important,  the  larger  writers  of  the  past. 
There  is,  of  course,  a  sense  in  which  Matthew 
Prior  is  a  classic.  He  is,  in  the  judgment  of 
some  of  us,  the  greatest  English  writer  of  vers  de 
socie'te'.  His  position  in  our  literature  is  well 
defined  and  secure.  But,  in  another  sense  of  the 
word,  Prior  can  scarcely  be  termed  a  classic,  be- 
cause his  work  does  not  reach  a  sufficiently  high 
level  of  moral  and  intellectual  greatness.  He  is 
plainly  a  "  smaller  "  poet,  but  just  as  plainly  one 


50  A   WORD   FOR  THE   SMALLER   AUTHORS 

that  has  his  uses.  However  much  we  ought  to 
study  and  love  Shakspere,  there  are  surely  times 
when  we  can  well  afford  to  read  Prior,  and  it  is  a 
pleasure  to  love  him  always. 

If  this  be  true  of  Prior  and  of  other  poets  of  the 
same  category,  it  is  clear  that  we  need  fear  the 
horns  of  no  dilemma.  We  may  cheerfully  grant 
that  we  ought  to  live  with  the  classics  far  more 
than  we  do,  and  that  the  critics  are  right  in  devot- 
ing most  of  their  time  and  talents  to  praising  and 
elucidating  the  larger  and  more  splendid  writers 
of  the  past.  But  we  may  hold  at  the  same  time 
that  there  are  authors  of  less  worth  who  should  be 
sojourned  with  for  a  season  by  all  persons  fond  of 
good  literature,  and  that  the  hospitable  virtues  of 
these  writers  should  be  praised  and  set  forth  by 
grateful  critics.  Because,  as  in  the  case  of  the  clas- 
sics, few  contemporary  readers  will  be  affected  by 
this  praise  is  no  reason  why  it  should  not  be  given 
often  and  ungrudgingly.  It  is  even  possible  that 
through  this  praise  of  authors,  especially  of  minor 
poets,  who  answer  to  particular  moods  and  desires, 
some  of  us  may  be  led  to  a  study  and  appreciation 
of  the  genuine  classics.  Not  infrequently  general 
consensus  of  praise  alienates  those  whom  it  was 
intended  to  attract.     Like  erring  Guineveres  with 


AND   FOR   POPULAR   JUDGMENT  5 1 

perfect  Arthurs,  we  find  too  late  that  we  have 
rebelled  against  what  has  been  universally  extolled, 
although  it  has  been  all  along  what  our  higher 
nature  craved.  If,  however,  we  become  attracted 
to  what  is  really  good,  though  not  the  highest,  we 
may  pass  on  by  slow  steps  to  an  appreciation  of 
the  greatest  and  best ;  not  by  quick  revulsion,  as 
was  the  case  with  the  guilty  queen  who  tampered 
with  crime.  If,  with  a  taste  for  good  literature 
implicit  in  us,  we  yet  consent  to  defile  or  enervate 
our  minds  with  what  is  foul  or  frivolous,  we  shall 
probably  some  day  revolt  from  our  mental  slavery 
when  it  is  too  late.  Let  us,  then,  cherish  the 
"  smaller "  writers  who  appeal  to  special  tastes 
and  aptitudes  of  a  wholesome  sort,  and  we  may  be 
sure  that  in  a  majority  of  cases  we  shall  be  sooner 
or  later  drawn  into  the  company  of  those  who  love 
the  classics.  For  it  is  with  literature  as  it  is  with 
religion  and  morals.  One  of  the  most  effective 
ways  to  render  a  man  fit  and  likely  to  practise 
the  heroic  virtues  is  to  inure  him  in  the  practice  of 
the  homely  virtues.  All  sermons  cannot  deal  with 
patriotism,  and  self-abnegation  of  the  Sidneyan 
type,  and  the  like  exalted  themes ;  some  sermons 
must  deal  with  filial  obedience,  neighborly  charity, 
and  kindred  homely  virtues.    Just  so  it  is  well  for 


52  A   WORD   FOR  THE   SMALLER   AUTHORS 

critics  occasionally  to  cease  preaching  the  classics 
and  to  invite  us  to  learn  to  love  the  lesser  writers. 

II.    Popular  Judgment  and  Expert  Opinion 

Turning  now  to  the  second  of  the  topics  named 
above,  we  are  at  once  brought  face  to  face  with 
the  fact  that  there  has  long  existed  with  a  cer- 
tain class  of  critics  a  profound  distrust  of  popular 
judgment  in  matters  of  literature  and  art.  "  The 
people  at  large,"  say  these  literary  and  artistic 
mandarins  in  effect,  "  has  only  coarse  and  rudi- 
mentary tastes  and  is  continually  bestowing  its 
affection  upon  unworthy  objects.  It  prefers 
the  late  General  Lew  Wallace  to  Mr.  George 
Meredith,  and  not  at  all  on  patriotic  considera- 
tions. It  cannot  appreciate  Wagner,  and  has 
never  really  given  its  suffrage  to  Browning.  We 
will  therefore  ignore  the  likes  and  dislikes  of  the 
people,  will  form  ourselves  into  a  coterie,  and  will 
write  criticism  for  the  benefit  of  one  another  — 
that  is  to  say,  of  the  elect." 

Unfortunately,  there  is  a  large  element  of  truth 
in  the  reasons  given  consciously  or  held  un- 
consciously by  the  mandarins  for  the  exclusive 
attitude  they  assume.  The  popular  taste  is  often 
extremely  crude,  and   public   favorites   are   often 


AND   FOR   POPULAR  JUDGMENT  53 

distinctly  unworthy  of  praise.  Two  facts,  how- 
ever, should  be  remembered  by  the  fastidious 
critics  who  seek  to  shun  the  ignotum  vztlnis. 
The  first  is  that,  if  reasoned  with  patiently,  the 
public  is  almost  sure  to  come  around  in  the  end  to 
right  ways  of  thinking.  The  second  is  that  some 
of  the  greatest  writers  and  artists  have  long  since 
become  genuinely  popular,  which  could  not  have 
happened  if  the  public  were  totally  devoid  of  taste. 
Italians  of  all  degrees  of  cultivation  are  said  to  read 
and  love  Dante,  and  the  same  thing  is  approxi- 
mately true  of  Englishmen  with  regard  to  Shak- 
spere.  Mere  lip-service  to  great  poets  and  artists 
counts,  indeed,  for  nothing,  since  your  public  is 
generally  willing  to  acknowledge  that  a  man  must 
be  great  if  it  hears  his  name  often  enough ;  but 
genuine  fondness  for  a  great  author  does  count 
for  much  in  any  proper  estimate  of  the  aesthetic 
capacity  of  the  masses. 

Critics  have,  to  be  sure,  frequently  recognized 
the  fact  that  certain  great  writers  make  a  universal 
appeal ;  but  they  nearly  always  draw  from  it  con- 
clusions relative  rather  to  the  power  of  the  writer 
than  to  the  inherent  capacity  of  the  public  to 
appreciate  what  is  largely  noble  and  true.  Yet 
that  the   public  is  normally  capable  of   this  sort 


54  A   WORD   FOR  THE   SMALLER   AUTHORS 

of  appreciation  seems  to  be  proved  by  political 
no  less  than  by  literary  history.  The  American 
people  as  a  whole  recognized  the  large  nobleness 
and  sincerity  of  Washington's  character  even  dur- 
ing his  lifetime  —  recognized  it  in  much  the  same 
way  as  the  Italian  peasant  recognizes  the  large 
nobleness  and  sincerity  of  his  national  poet.  Just 
so  in  spiritual  matters  the  large  nobleness  and 
truth  of  the  great  historic  religions  are  recognized 
by  the  lowly  as  well  as  by  those  in  high  places 
whose  advantages  have  naturally  given  them  a 
wider  culture.  It  was  for  this  reason  that  in 
Christian  England  Bunyan's  "  Pilgrim's  Progress  " 
became  almost  immediately  a  favorite  book  among 
the  poor,  and  was  enabled,  after  Cowper's  day,  to 
live  down  the  neglect  and  contempt  of  the  educated 
classes. 

As  I  have  said,  the  mandarins  are  not  ignorant 
of  the  facts  just  cited,  but  it  would  certainly  look 
as  if  they  failed  to  draw  one  salutary  lesson  from 
them.  This  lesson,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  may 
be  condensed  as  follows  :  If  a  writer  or  artist  has 
been  before  the  public  for  a  period  sufficiently 
long  to  allow  all  mere  temporary  aberrations  of 
judgment  to  be  eliminated,  and  still  fails  of  gen- 
uine popularity,  then  the  inference   ought  to  be 


AND   FOR   POPULAR   JUDGMENT  55 

that,  unless  some  definite  reason  not  properly 
chargeable  to  the  man  or  his  work  can  be  as- 
signed for  the  continued  lack  of  popularity,  the 
writer  or  artist  in  question  —  Landor,  for  example 
—  ought  not  to  be  regarded  as  possessing  sufficient 
nobleness  and  sincerity  of  character,  as  expressed 
in  his  work,  to  be  worthy  of  a  place  among  the 
greatest  masters. 

The  position  here  taken  may  become  plainer  if  it 
is  couched  in  other  words.  Are  we  not  bound  by 
the  teaching  of  history  and  experience  to  presume 
that  in  the  long  run  the  judgment  of  the  public 
with  regard  to  the  greatness  of  the  men  of  a 
very  high  order  of  endowments,  not  adequately 
recognized  by  contemporaries,  will  coincide  with 
that  of  the  few  far-sighted  critics  who  proclaimed 
their  glory  before  it  was  generally  acknowledged  ? 
If  such  a  presumption  is  fair,  it  follows  that  if  the 
public  continues  obdurate  to  the  claims  made  by 
critics  for  certain  writers,  the  critics  are  mistaken, 
at  least  in  part.  This  is  certainly  the  stand  an 
optimist  ought  to  take ;  for  if  large  nobleness  and 
truth  fail  in  the  end,  except  under  very  special 
circumstances,  to  win  the  admiration  and  recog- 
nition of  the  masses  of  men,  the  future  of  the  race 
is  dark  indeed. 


56         A   WORD   FOR  THE   SMALLER   AUTHORS 

I  believe  that  the  critics  will  have  to  accept  this 
conclusion  at  some  not  distant  day.  It  will  simply 
mean  that  a  few  special  favorites  of  the  mandarins 
will  have  to  be  set  in  a  lower  niche  in  the  Temple 
of  Fame ;  for  the  supreme  and  the  very  great  and 
even  the  great  writers,  as  a  rule,  appeal  to  the 
people  as  well  as  to  the  critics.  No  thoughtful 
man  will  deny  the  value  of  expert  opinion,  and  it 
is  plainly  expert  opinion  which  does  most  to  place 
the  secondary  men  of  genius  where  they  belong. 
When  large  nobleness  and  truth  are  absent,  the 
verdict  of  the  public  is  of  no  great  moment,  and 
the  more  minute  study  of  the  expert  tells  with  full 
force.  Botticelli,  therefore,  if  I  may  be  allowed  to 
draw  my  examples  from  an  art  in  which  I  am 
certainly  anything  but  expert,  may  take  a  second- 
ary place  undisputed  if  the  experts  decide  that  he 
is  entitled  to  it ;  but  it  would  seem  that  the  critics 
of  art  may  as  well  give  up  trying  to  place  him 
alongside  of  or  above  Titian  and  Raphael.  Ap- 
parently he  has  not  the  large  and  permanent  quali- 
ties that  win  the  suffrage  of  the  public ;  hence  he 
does  not  belong  of  right  to  the  very  highest  rank 
of  painters. 

There  is,  however,  one  point  that  needs  to  be 
noticed  in  this  connection.     It  happens  sometimes, 


AND    FUR    POPULAR   JUDGMENT  57 

though  rarely,  that  the  form  of  expression  chosen 
by  a  master  of  the  highest  rank  becomes,  for 
reasons  over  which  he  has  no  control,  somewhat 
repellent  to  the  masses  in  later  generations.  When 
this  is  the  case,  as  it  partly  is,  for  example,  with 
Milton,  the  consensus  of  the  best  current  critical 
opinion  with  that  of  past  critical  and  popular 
opinion  is  practically  sufficient  to  establish  the 
rank  of  the  writer  or  artist  in  question.  In  this 
case  it  will  be  observed  that  the  large  nobility 
and  sincerity  which  have  been  posited  are  not  as 
a  rule  denied;  they  are  merely  obscured  by  the 
form  of  expression  which  has  become  obsolete.  In 
the  case  of  the  famous  painter  just  used  as  an  ex- 
ample, the  large  nobility  and  sincerity  required  do 
not  seem  to  be  present  in  sufficient  quantity  to  im- 
press the  public  as  they  do  in  the  cases  of  Titian  and 
Raphael.  Something  may,  however,  be  said  with 
regard  to  the  popular  inability  to  appreciate  such 
an  artist  on  account  of  certain  impediments  to  a 
full  understanding  of  his  form  of  expression ;  and 
if  this  be  true,  it  is  possible  that  what  has  just 
been  said  with  regard  to  Milton,  holds  good  also 
of  him.  But  certainly  the  sneers  and  the  Phari- 
saical bearing  of  the  mandarins  toward  the  public 
cannot  be  justified  on  any  grounds. 


Ill 

THE   AIMS    AND    METHODS    OF 
LITERARY   STUDY 


[Read  before  a  few  students  of  English  at  Princeton  Uni- 
versity, November,  1901.  Delivered  before  the  Missouri 
Teachers1  Association  at  Kansas  City,  December,  1901.  Pub- 
lished in  The  Sewanee  Review,  January,  1904.] 


Ill 

THE   AIMS   AND    METHODS    OF 
LITERARY   STUDY 

That  within  the  past  ten  years  there  has  been 
in  this  country  a  marked  increase  of  interest  in 
literature  and  literary  studies  is  a  statement  which 
will  scarcely  be  disputed  by  any  person  occupied 
with  such  matters.  The  growth  of  literary  clubs, 
especially  among  women,  the  emphasis  laid  upon 
English  literature  in  primary  and  secondary 
schools,  the  work  done  by  university  extension 
lecturers,  and,  particularly,  the  trend  in  our  col- 
leges and  universities  from  purely  philological 
to  literary  courses  may  be  cited  as  evidences  that 
the  phenomenon  exists.  If  these  evidences  are 
not  sufficient,  we  may  add  to  them  the  development 
of  libraries,  of  the  publishing  business,  and  of 
literary  departments  in  the  daily  newspapers. 
That  this  interest  is  more  intense  or  more  deep- 
seated  than  was  the  similar  interest  manifested 
in  New  England  during  the  days  of  the  Transcen- 

61 


62  THE  AIMS  AND   METHODS   OF 

dental  Movement  need  be  neither  affirmed  nor 
denied ;  but  it  is  naturally  far  more  widespread, 
and  it  is  certainly  an  advance  upon  whatever 
popular  interest  in  literature  was  displayed  dur- 
ing the  two  decades  that  followed  the  civil  war. 

The  causes  of  the  phenomenon  need  not  be 
investigated  too  curiously.  Throughout  the  world 
our  generation  has  been  critical  rather  than  crea- 
tive, and  a  critical  age  is  in  the  main  only  another 
name  for  an  epoch  of  literary  studies.  Then, 
to  go  somewhat  deeper,  great  accumulation  of 
wealth  and  great  accompanying  desire  for  luxury 
and  for  culture,  as  a  fit  adjunct  of  luxury,  coin- 
ciding with  an  era  of  self-consciousness  and  of 
democratic  development,  must  make  for  an  in- 
crease in  studies  which  themselves  make  for  refine- 
ment, for  personal  distinction,  and  for  relief  from 
ennui.  The  very  confusion  of  our  age,  which 
has  probably  affected  its  creative  work  disas- 
trously, has  driven  many  men  and  women  to 
pursuits  of  a  literary  nature  as  to  a  kind  of  haven, 
even  if  this  same  confusion  has  often  rendered 
their  studies  mainly  nugatory,  except  as  a  moral 
sedative. 

But  while  this  increase  of  popular  interest  in 
literature  and  in  literary  studies  may  be  taken  for 


LITERARY   STUDY  63 

granted  and  while  its  causes  may  remain  uninves- 
tigated, it  hardly  seems  wise  not  to  consider  some- 
what carefully  the  aims  and  methods  of  the  eager 
students  of  literature  we  see  on  all  sides,  and  to 
compare  their  ends  and  means  with  those  ideal 
ends  and  means  which,  after  a  due  survey  of 
the  field,  we  may  set  up  for  ourselves  and  for 
them.  Such  a  setting  up  of  ideals  for  other 
people  is  always  hazardous ;  but  if  our  methods 
of  reasoning  are  both  inductive  and  deductive,  if 
we  rely  upon  observation  as  much  as  upon  theory, 
and  upon  common  sense  as  much  as  upon  either, 
we  shall  be  able,  perhaps,  to  reach  some  use- 
ful results.  What,  then,  seem  to  be  the  aims  of 
students  of  literature,  as  to-day  we  see  them  in 
this  country  applying  themselves  to  their  chosen 
and  delightful  work?  In  answering  this  question 
a  rough  classification  of  such  students  will  be 
serviceable. 

The  most  obvious  division  is  into  professional 
students  and  amateurs  or  dilettantes,  but  it  is  easy 
and  necessary  to  divide  further.  Professional 
students  of  literature  fall,  I  think,  into  much  the 
same  classes  as  other  professional  men.  There 
are  those  who  are  born  with  an  aptitude  for  let- 
ters, who  become  successful  critics,  noted  teachers 


64  THE  AIMS  AND   METHODS   OF 

of  literature,  or  men  of  letters  devoting  a  por- 
tion of  their  creative  energy  to  criticism,  such  as 
Mr.  Howells  and  Mr.  Henry  James  for  our  own 
epoch,  or  as  Ben  Jonson  and  John  Dryden  among 
the  elder  writers.  These  are  the  leaders  occupy- 
ing, except  when  they  are  great  geniuses,  much 
the  same  position  as  the  more  eminent  clergymen, 
lawyers,  and  physicians  do.  In  the  rank  and  file 
are  found  the  minor  critics,  a  majority  of  the 
teachers  of  literature,  most  of  the  itinerant  lec- 
turers on  literary  subjects,  and  the  book  reviewers. 
These  correspond  with  the  safe,  respectable  prac- 
titioners whom  most  of  us  are  glad  to  employ  when 
we  are  ill.  Below  these,  as  in  every  other  profes- 
sion, come  the  utter  mediocrities,  the  failures  and 
the  quacks,  about  whom  we  need  say  nothing. 

The  amateurs  are  harder  to  classify.  At  their 
head,  however,  plainly  stands  the  literary  virtuoso, 
the  man  of  refined  taste  who  lives  in  an  atmos- 
phere of  culture,  and  who,  if  he  writes,  is  almost 
sure  to  illuminate  whatever  subject  he  touches. 
He  frequently  has  other  than  literary  interests, 
and  he  never  has  hard  and  fast  obligations  to 
publishers,  readers,  or  students.  A  good  type  of 
such  a  virtuoso  is  Horace  Walpole  ;  another  and 
very   different   type    is    Edward   FitzGerald,    the 


LITERARY   STUDY  6$ 

translator  of  Omar  Khayyam,  who,  if  he  had  been 
less  of  a  recluse,  would  now  probably  be  ranked 
among  the  greater  English  critics.  Below  the 
virtuoso  comes  what  we  may  call  loosely  the  cul- 
tivated man  or  woman  who  has  acquired  through 
natural  instinct  and  training  a  love  of  books 
and  a  fairly  wide  knowledge  of  them,  often  con- 
siderable in  one  or  more  departments.  We  all 
know  many  such  persons,  although  in  busy 
America  they  are  doubtless  proportionally  fewer 
in  number  than  in  England  or  in  France.  Below 
these  come  the  serious  and  honorable  aspirants 
for  culture,  the  men  and  women  who,  in  spite  of 
meagre  educational  opportunities  and  of  lives  full 
of  other  and  more  pressing  cares  and  duties,  seize 
every  chance  and  means  of  cultivating  themselves. 
University,  college,  and  high  school  students,  who 
may,  in  a  short  time,  belong  to  one  of  the  other 
groups  already  mentioned,  must,  at  some  period 
in  their  career,  be  numbered  with  these  aspirants 
for  culture.  Finally,  in  the  lowest  class,  fall  the 
men  and  women  who  are  entitled  only  to  the 
unpleasant  designation  of  smatterers,  of  whom, 
as  of  the  quacks,  we  need  take  no  further  notice. 
With  regard,  now,  to  the  aims  of  all  lovers  of 
literature  who  are  worthy  of  being  in  any  sense 


66  THE  AIMS  AND   METHODS   OF 

classed  as  students,  it  is  obvious  that  from  many 
points  of  view  the  most  inspiring  are  those  cherished 
by  the  great  critics  and  men  of  letters  to  whom 
literature,  in  some  blended  words  of  Keats,  is  a 
thing  of  beauty,  and  therefore  a  thing  of  truth 
and  a  joy  forever.  But  because  these  men  are  as 
much  born  to  literary  studies  as  Plato,  about 
whose  young  lips  the  bees  clustered,  was  born  to 
golden  eloquence,  their  aims  and  methods,  while 
serviceable  as  ideal  standards,  must  always  be 
unattainable  by  the  large  majority;  and  this  is 
true  also  of  the  aims  and  methods  of  the  virtuoso, 
although  these,  while  honorable,  are  not  fully 
inspiring  because  they  are  less  purely  philan- 
thropic in  character,  less  founded  on  the  noble 
idea  of  service  to  fellow-men.  It  follows  that  it  is 
with  the  aims  of  the  majority  of  literary  students, 
whether  professional  or  amateur,  that  we  are  most 
concerned;  and  in  pursuing  this  subject  let  us  ask 
and  try  to  answer  a  fundamental  question  :  Why 
do  or  why  should  men  study  literature  ? 

If  one  is  born  with  a  bent  to  such  study,  it  is  a 
sufficient  answer  to  our  question  to  assert  the 
existence  of  the  bent ;  for  we  may  assume  that 
literature  is  a  worthy  object  of  knowledge,  and 
that  all  worthy  objects  of  knowledge  deserve  to  be 


LITERARY   STUDY  67 

studied  by  chosen  spirits.  But  there  are  few 
chosen  spirits,  and  students  of  literature  are  very 
numerous.  Is  not  this  because  there  is  implanted 
in  all  persons  endowed  with  spiritual  aspirations 
a  desire,  not  merely  of  self-distinction  (smatterers 
and  mediocrities  have  this),  but  of  drawing  nearer 
to  ideal  beauty,  truth,  and  goodness,  preferably  in 
some  form  of  combination  ?  And  because  in 
genuine  literature  ideal  beauty,  truth,  and  good- 
ness are  found  in  combination,  expressed  through 
the  medium  of  language,  with  which,  when  it  is 
our  own,  we  are  more  familiar  than  we  are  with 
the  mediums  of  expression  employed  by  the  sculp- 
tor, the  painter,  and  the  musician,  do  not  more 
men  and  women  seek  the  ideal  through  literature 
than  through  any  other  means  save  religion  ? 
Students  of  literature  are  numerous,  then,  and 
increasingly  numerous,  because  they  find  through 
literature  their  easiest  access  to  the  ideal. 

But  if  a  more  or  less  conscious  aspiration  for 
the  most  accessible  ideal  be  the  basic  reason  for 
the  popular  interest  in  literary  studies,  which  we 
have  posited,  it  would  seem  to  follow  that  the 
aims  and  methods  of  the  teacher  and  the  student 
of  literature  ought  to  make  for  the  attainment  of 
ideal  truth,  beauty,  and    goodness  in    the   fullest 


68  THE  AIMS  AND   METHODS   OF 

possible  measure.  The  introduction  of  any  antago- 
nistic aim  or  method  must  necessarily  militate 
against  the  attainment  of  the  central  purpose  for 
which,  according  to  our  reasoning,  literary  studies 
are  begun.  An  important  consequence  ensues. 
We  do  not  draw  nearer  to  ideal  beauty,  truth,  and 
goodness  in  combination  if  we  give  the  acquisition 
of  mere  knowledge  a  disproportionate  place  in  our 
aims  and  methods.  Knowledge  helps  us  to  attain 
truth,  but  it  does  not  prompt  to,  although  it  does 
direct,  the  realization  of  goodness  in  conduct  and 
the  appreciation  of  beauty.  We  do  not  truly 
study  literature  unless  through  our  studies  we  gain 
wisdom  in  contradistinction  to  mere  knowledge, 
and  unless  we  also  develop  our  aesthetic  faculties 
and,  what  is  far  more  to  the  purpose,  become 
better  men  and  women.  Hence  knowledge  in 
relation  to  literature  should  always  occupy  an 
ancillary  position  —  it  should  be  the  handmaiden 
charged  with  ushering  us  into  the  presence  of  the 
ideal.  But  what  have  our  teachers  and  professors 
of  literature,  our  editors  of  school  and  college 
texts,  our  writers  of  learned  monographs  and 
manuals,  and  finally  our  promoters  of  literary  clubs 
and  lecture  courses  to  say  about  themselves  in  these 
premises  ?     Do  they  not  too  frequently  make  mere 


LITERARY   STUDY  69 

knowledge  the  be-all  and  the  end-all  of  their 
work  ?  It  is  so  easy  for  teacher  and  pupil  to  add 
fact  to  fact  and  call  it  studying  literature  — 
whereas  in  its  best  estate  such  attainment  of 
knowledge  about  literature  is  only  a  means  to  cul- 
ture, not  culture  itself  ;  while  in  its  worst  estate  it 
is  a  positive  bar  to  culture  and  its  pleasures. 

Just  here  we  may  note  a  distinct  advance  that 
has  been  made  in  the  past  ten  years.  Most  of  the 
literary  work  that  was  done  in  our  colleges  and 
universities  fell  under  the  department  of  English 
and,  in  consequence,  under  the  direction  of  men 
who,  in  general,  were  trained  philologists.  What 
attention  they  gave  to  the  literature  produced  by 
Englishmen  and  Americans  after  the  year  1600 
was  in  the  main  perfunctory ;  and  although  there 
was  no  lack  of  great  authors  and  books  prior  to 
that  year,  these  were  seldom  treated  save  as  store- 
houses of  linguistic  facts. 

Now  philology  *  is  far  from  being  an  uninter- 
esting study,  and  it  is,  of  course,  most  important, 
whether  considered  in  itself  or  in  its  relations  with 
history  and  literature  and  other  subjects  of  human 
inquiry.       But   unless    admirably  handled   by  the 

1  It  is  almost  needless  to  say  that  the  word  is  used  here  in  its 
narrower,  not  in  its  larger  sense. 


JO  THE   AIMS   AND   METHODS   OF 

teacher,  philology,  like  any  other  science,  however 
valuable  it  may  be  in  other  respects,  is  less  avail- 
able than  literature  as  a  means  to  culture.  It 
tends  to  aid  us  but  slightly  in  our  approach  to  the 
ideal,  whereas  literature  should  aid  us  greatly. 
Fortunately  during  the  past  ten  years  this  fact  has 
been  more  and  more  recognized  in  American  col- 
leges and  universities,  until,  in  some  institutions 
indeed,  the  balance  has  been  tipped  almost  un- 
fairly against  philology.  In  England  this  does 
not  seem  to  be  the  case ;  yet  there  a  great  amount 
of  literary  training  has  always  been  obtainable 
through  the  best  of  mediums,  the  Greek  and 
Latin  classics. 

But  while  all  our  institutions  of  learning,  schools 
and  libraries,  as  well  as  colleges  and  universities, 
afford  better  facilities  for  the  study  of  literature 
than  they  did  a  decade  ago,  the  improvement  is 
not  great  enough  to  warrant  a  large  amount  of 
self-approbation.  Philology  no  longer  stalks  about 
in  borrowed  plumes ;  but  the  history  of  literature, 
which  is  a  branch  of  culture-history,  is  frequently 
studied  to  the  exclusion  of  literature  itself ;  and 
when  great  poetry  and  great  prose  are  put  before 
the  student,  this  is  often  done  so  mechanically  and 
with  such  a  lack  of  proportion  in  the  treatment  that 


LITERARY   STUDY  J I 

the  cause  of  culture  is  not  greatly  subserved.  For 
example,  deadly  methods  of  analysis,  supplemented 
by  a  terrifying  apparatus  of  largely  irrelevant 
questions,  are  daily  applied  in  our  schoolrooms  to 
poems  which  were  written  to  stir  the  emotions,  not 
perplex  the  minds  of  unoffending  children.  In 
other  words,  the  letter  of  literature  is  diligently 
conned,  but  the  delicate  spirit  of  literature  —  I  was 
going  to  say  —  escapes  both  the  teacher  and  the 
pupil  —  but  it  really  does  not  escape  at  all.  It 
remains,  as  it  were,  an  Ariel  imprisoned  in  the 
tree  of  knowledge,  waiting  for  a  Prospero  to  give 
it  freedom.  Again,  through  over-emphasis  and 
under-emphasis  in  their  treatment  of  writers, 
our  teachers  and  professors  and  lecturers  and 
critics  are  giving  the  world  of  students  and 
readers  very  narrow  and  distorted  views  as  to 
the  scope  of  that  literature  which  is  one  of  the 
main  glories  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race.  I  have 
often  found  that  the  names  of  important  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  century  writers  meant 
absolutely  nothing,  not  to  a  schoolboy  or  an  under- 
graduate, but  to  a  graduate  student  who  intended 
to  make  the  teaching  of  literature  his  life-work. 
Perhaps  just  here,  even  at  the  risk  of  some- 
what attenuating  the  strength  of  whatever  argu- 


72  THE  AIMS  AND   METHODS   OF 

ments  this  discussion  may  involve,  it  will  not  be 
amiss  for  me  to  dwell  for  a  moment  upon  what 
seem  to  be  faults  of  our  professional  teach- 
ing and  studying  of  literature  that  demand 
correction. 

One,  as  hinted  above,  is  the  preponderating 
part  in  literary  teaching  and  criticism  played  by 
analysis.  It  is  the  fashion  with  many  critics  to 
dwell  upon  the  internal  rather  than  upon  the 
external  features  of  a  piece  of  literature,  to  dilate 
upon  its  qualities  rather  than  upon  what  it  is  as 
a  whole,  to  treat  it  as  something  to  be  dissected 
rather  than  to  discuss  its  general  effects  upon 
readers  at  large  and  its  position  in  the  body  of 
national  or  world  literature.  To  put  it  otherwise, 
their  criticism  tends  to  be  analytic  and  subjective 
rather  than  synthetic  and  objective.  There  is 
much  room,  indeed,  for  such  criticism,  since 
it  obviously  serves  to  bring  out  beauties  that 
would  otherwise  lie  hidden,  and  to  intensify 
our  interest  in  the  writer  and  his  work.  Yet 
it  is  very  questionable  whether  such  analytic 
criticism  should  occupy  so  prominent  a  part  or 
come  so  early  in  our  literary  training.  After  all, 
it  seems  mainly  to  ask  and  answer  the  question, 
Why  does  this   author  appeal  to  us  in  such   and 


LITERARY   STUDY  73 

such  a  way  ?  But  this  is  a  question  more  important 
to  a  writer  than  to  a  reader.  If  we  are  under- 
taking to  write  poetry,  by  all  means  let  us  analyze 
great  poetry  and  try  to  seize  the  secret  of  its 
power.  If  we  are  readers,  however,  it  is  perhaps 
better  to  try  first  to  answer  the  questions,  How 
has  this  writer  affected  others  —  that  is,  What 
ought  we  to  expect  to  find  in  him  ?  and,  How 
does  this  writer  compare  with  others  in  his  class  — 
that  is,  Should  we  devote  ourselves  to  him  as  much 
as  to  some  other  and  greater  man  ? 

It  is  at  once  plain  that  we  have  here  in 
somewhat  disguised  forms  the  two  well-defined 
methods  of  criticism  for  which  those  distin- 
guished Frenchmen,  M.  Lemaitre  and  M.  Bru- 
netiere,  and  other  critics  ranged  behind  each  of 
them,  have  long  been  doing  battle  —  methods  of 
criticism  which,  in  fact,  have  been  in  the  world 
for  ages  and  to  which  we  give  the  names  Im- 
pressionist and  Academic.  It  is  plain  also  that 
my  complaint  is  that  of  late,  and  especially  in 
our  teaching  of  literature,  we  have  not  been 
giving  academic  criticism  —  the  criticism  of  judg- 
ment—  due  consideration;  that  we  have  been 
overpartial  to  the  criticism  of  interpretation, 
which   tends  more  or  less  to  be  impressionist  in 


74  THE  AIMS  AND   METHODS   OF 

character.  I  am  constantly  reading  and  hearing 
criticisms  of  books  that  make  me  wonder 
whether  the  analyzer  has  ever  put  together  the 
qualities  he  discovers,  whether  he  has  ever 
grasped  as  a  whole  the  piece  of  literature  with 
which  he  is  dealing.  He  talks  of  sublimity, 
charm,  love  of  nature,  et  cetera,  until  I  wonder 
whether  he  is  not  in  the  position  of  the  prover- 
bial person  who  cannot  see  the  wood  for  the 
trees.  It  seems  to  me  that  it  would  be  much 
more  logical  and  profitable  for  our  critics 
and  teachers  to  begin  with  the  criticism  of  judg- 
ment—  for  example,  to  judge  a  poem  as  a 
whole ;  to  get  its  position,  as  near  as  one  can 
in  the  poet's  own  works,  in  the  class  of  poems 
to  which  it  belongs,  in  the  literature  of  the 
nation,  and  finally,  if  it  be  worth  the  pains, 
in  the  literature  of  the  world.  Then  it  would 
be  logical  and  proper  to  pass  to  the  more 
intensive  method  of  analysis  and  interpreta- 
tion, which  would  increase  both  our  knowl- 
edge and  our  enjoyment.  It  is  true  that  no 
one  can  entirely  separate  these  two  methods 
of  criticising.  We  analyze  somewhat  when  we 
are  trying  to  determine  what  a  poem  or  book 
stands   for  as   a   whole.      But   I    am   quite   sure 


LITERARY   STUDY  75 

that  in  our  school  and  college  classes  we 
give  too  much  place  to  the  analytic  or  interpre- 
tive method,  with  the  result  that,  when  we 
ought  to  be  getting  wide  views  of  literature  and 
life,  we  learn  to  know  a  few  works  of  a  few 
writers  only,  trusting  to  time  to  introduce  us  to 
the  rest.  Time,  however,  is  more  like  a  slave 
driver  than  a  master  of  ceremonies,  and  thus 
nine  out  of  ten  of  us  are  confined  throughout 
our  lives  to  a  mere  hearsay  acquaintance  even 
with  great  authors,  much  more  with  minor  ones. 
From  what  I  have  just  said,  the  reader  will 
not  be  surprised  to  learn  that  I  am  somewhat 
sceptical  as  to  the  good  results  of  much  of  the 
teaching  of  literature  based  on  the  so-called 
series  of  English  classics,  though  I  have  con- 
tributed to  such  series  myself ; 1  that  I  am  not 
altogether  convinced  that  the  excessive  attention 
paid  to  Shakspere  in  schools  and  colleges  is 
wise ;  that  I  doubt  very  much  whether  it  is 
profitable  to  spend  a  term  or  a  year  on  any  one 
writer  or  small  group  of  writers,  unless  it  can 
be  done  in  connection  with  courses  that  give  a 
wide  survey  of  the  form  of  literature  that  is 
being  studied ;    that  I  am  inclined  to  think   that 

1  See  the  sixth  paper  for  a  fuller  discussion  of  this  matter. 


76  THE   AIMS   AND   METHODS   OF 

all  so-called  "  laboratory  courses "  in  literature 
should  be  accompanied,  as  they  are  in  the  case 
of  the  natural  sciences,  by  lectures  that  serve 
not  merely  to  present  the  subject  as  a  whole 
but  also  to  set  it  in  its  historical  and  philosoph- 
ical relations  with  other  subjects  of  human 
inquiry  and  with  life  itself.  I  know  that  it  is 
much  easier  to  teach  and  learn  a  minute  divi- 
sion of  a  subject,  and  that  for  purposes  of  im- 
parting methods  of  study  —  that  is,  for  graduate 
instruction  —  such  division  is  often  absolutely 
necessary.  But  I  cannot  perceive  that  our 
specialistic  training  is  giving  us  the  grasp  upon 
literature  that  many  of  our  untrained  fathers  and 
mothers  had,  and  I  think  it  is  time  for  us  to  ask 
ourselves  where  we  are  and  whither  we  are  tending. 
Nor  should  our  queries  be  confined  to  the 
whereabouts  and  the  whitherwards  of  the  teachers 
of  literature.  The  literary  specialists  who  fur- 
nish us  with  admirably  detailed  studies  and 
monographs  often  lead  us  astray  by  the  impor- 
tance they  give  to  very  minor  writers  or  to  small 
literary  movements,  and  cause  us  to  blunder  by 
applying  to  literature  that  historic  or,  perhaps 
better,  that  pedantic  estimate  against  which 
Matthew    Arnold    warned    us.     Yet    the    mono- 


LITERARY   STUDY  JJ 

graphs  and  dissertations  continue  to  come  out, 
and  we  may  easily  swamp  ourselves  in  the 
minutiae  of  scholarship,  while  philosophic  criti- 
cism goes  begging  for  adherents,  and  compara- 
tive literature  attracts  too  few  students.  As  a 
result,  even  the  nomenclature  of  the  art  of 
criticism  is  at  sixes  and  sevens.  Think,  for 
example,  of  how  little  definiteness  attaches  to 
the  term  "lyric."  So  also  the  application  of  the 
theory  of  evolution  to  the  study  of  literature 
is  yet  in  its  infancy.  Where,  for  instance,  will 
one  find  a  consistent  and  full  account  of  the 
evolution  of  that  highest  form  of  lyric,  the  ode? 
No  wonder  that  the  students  of  the  sciences 
look  severely  askance  at  us  when  we  pose  as 
anything  but  amateurs.  No  wonder  that  the 
late  Mr.  Freeman,  the  historian,  spoke  scorn- 
fully of  us  as  chatterers  about  poor  Harriet 
Shelley,  or  that  Mark  Twain,  after  reading 
Professor  Dowden's  treatment  of  the  relations 
between  Shelley  and  his  unfortunate  first  wife, 
was  constrained  like  a  knight-errant  to  enter 
the  lists  against  the  biographer.  In  nine  cases 
out  of  ten,  when  we  have  not  chattered,  we  have 
been  grubbing  ;  yet  we  are  neither  sparrows  nor 
worms. 


78  THE  AIMS  AND   METHODS   OF 

Still,  even  if  all  that  I  have  just  said  by  way  of 
adverse  criticism  be  well  founded,  it  is  undeniable 
that  a  great  advance  has  been  made  in  the  study 
of  literature  viewed  as  a  constituent  element  in  the 
academic  curriculum ;  it  is  equally  undeniable  that 
in  this  country  in  matters  of  culture  we  can  never 
afford  to  confine  our  attention  to  the  academic 
class.  As  we  have  seen,  there  is  an  immense  and 
increasing  amount  of  self-cultivation  in  literature 
being  attempted  by  American  men  and  women  of 
all  classes.  What  are  the  aims  and  methods  of 
these  people  ? 

I  am  not  sure  that  their  aims  are  not  often 
higher,  I  will  not  say  than  those  of  teachers 
generally,  —  for  I  believe  that  the  aims  of  our 
teachers  are  very  high,  —  but  higher  than  those 
of  the  apparently  more  fortunate  college  student 
or  professor,  or  of  the  minor  critical  writers  and 
lecturers.  These  very  frequently  appear  to 
me  to  be  turning  to  the  study  of  literature  as  a 
means  for  obtaining  a  livelihood  or  as  a  peculiarly 
pleasant  and  easy  method  of  exploiting  a  popular 
taste.  We  may  posit,  to  be  sure,  in  most  cases,  a 
bent  for  literary  studies ;  but  very  frequently  a  fair 
salary,  a  good  social  position,  and  a  long  vacation 
are  more  in  evidence  as  motives  to  the  assumption 


LITERARY   STUDY  79 

of  a  literary  calling  as  college  teacher  than  any 
oestrus  sent  by  the  gods  to  goad  the  aspiring  spirit 
up  the  steep  and  arduous  heights  of  culture.  And 
as  for  the  popular  lecturer,  it  would  at  least  appear 
easy  for  a  soulful  young  man  to  persuade  himself 
that  it  is  his  life-work  to  lecture  on  Dante  to  a 
group  of  adoring  women  at  so  many  dollars  per 
head. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  we  eliminate  the  dab- 
bling in  literature  done  by  men  and  women  who 
think  that  a  certain  show  of  culture  is  desirable, 
it  seems  to  me  that  the  aims  of  a  considerable 
portion  of  the  amateur  students  of  literature  in 
America  are  distinctly  high,  at  least  from  a 
moral  point  of  view.  They  are  trying  to  elevate 
themselves  by  contact  with  the  ideal,  and  there 
can  be  no  higher  individual  aim.  There  is  a 
tremendously  impressive  earnestness  to  be  ob- 
served among  such  literary  workers  in  every 
section  of  the  country.  And  where  this  strenu- 
ousness  is  not  visible,  there  is  often  a  quiet,  dig- 
nified pursuit  of  culture,  though  perhaps  along 
narrow  lines,  to  be  found  among  persons  whose 
vocations  hardly  suggest  literary  or  artistic  procliv- 
ities. It  is  plain,  however,  that  all  aspiration  for 
self-culture  is  more  or  less  lacking  in  that  altruism 


80  THE  AIMS  AND   METHODS   OF 

which  is  to  be  seen,  in  some  measure  at  least,  in 
the  aims  of  teachers  and  of  other  professional 
students,  and  that,  as  a  rule,  the  methods  of  the 
amateur  are  less  well-grounded  and  comprehen- 
sive than  those  of  his  fellow-worker. 

It  is  desirable  in  this  connection  to  comment 
briefly  upon  the  increasing  number  of  "  collectors  " 
to  be  found  in  America.  The  treasures  in  the 
shape  of  rare  manuscripts  and  books  contained  in 
the  libraries  of  some  of  our  rich  men,  and  in  many 
cases  made  accessible  to  the  student  with  unparal- 
leled generosity,  are  startling  to  the  uninitiated  in 
these  matters.  That  such  collectors,  especially 
those  who  delight  in  rich  bindings  and  extra  illus- 
trations, are  always  men  of  true  culture,  it  would 
be  hazardous  to  assert ;  but  many  of  them  are,  and 
any  manifestation  of  a  love  of  the  beautiful  or 
even  of  respect  for  the  instrumentalities  of  culture 
is  of  great  importance  in  educating  the  taste  of  the 
public.  But  we  must  not  rest  satisfied  with  wit- 
nessing the  raids  made  by  our  millionaires  upon 
the  collections  of  Europe  or  with  chronicling  the 
growth  of  bibliophile  societies,  excellent  work 
though  these  are  doing.  We  must  be  insistent  in 
our  demands  that  our  great  cities  one  and  all  range 
themselves  with  Boston  in  the  zealous  formation 


LITERARY   STUDY  8 1 

of  libraries  in  which  the  student  can  find  practi- 
cally all  the  originals  and  facsimiles  he  needs  for 
the  most  minute  investigation.1 

From  what  has  been  said  it  would  seem  to  fol- 
low that  the  aims  of  the  professional  student  of 
literature  need  to  be  made  more  ideal  and  less 
practical,  his  methods  more  flexible  and  less  me- 
chanical, while  the  aims  of  the  amateur  should 
be  made  more  altruistic  and  his  methods  less 
nebulous.  How  are  these  ends  best  to  be  at- 
tained ? 

I  know  of  no  better  way  than  for  the  one  class 
of  literary  students  to  keep  constantly  in  mind  the 
aims  of  the  other  class,  and  to  consider  carefully 
and  partly  adopt  its  methods  of  study.  This  is 
precisely  what  they  are  not  doing  at  present.  The 
critic  is  much  too  likely  to  smile  with  condescen- 
sion at  literary  opinions  advanced  by  people  who 
have  not  read  so  many  hundreds  of  books  as  he 
has.  On  the  other  hand,  the  literary  amateur  or 
the  cultivated  reader  is  much  too  likely  to  think 
that  the  critic  is  the  slave  of  his  own  rules  or  a 
mere  dry-as-dust  whose   opinion  is   pedantic  and 

1  With  regard  to  the  acquisition  of  facsimiles  upon  a  large  scale, 
see  the  letters  by  Professor  Charles  M.  Gayley  and  others  which 
The  Evening  Post  has  recently  been  publishing. 


82  THE  AIMS  AND  METHODS   OF 

absurd.  This  is  especially  the  case  among  Anglo- 
Saxons,  who  as  a  race  have  cherished  a  distrust  of 
criticism,  apparently  on  the  principle  that,  as  an 
Englishman's  house  is  his  castle,  so  his  opinions 
ought  to  be  surrounded  by  a  moat  of  ignorance 
and  prejudice.  In  other  words,  our  two  classes 
of  literary  workers  are  in  many  respects  sundered ; 
whereas  it  appears,  as  I  have  just  said,  that  each 
class  should  consider  carefully  and  partly  adopt 
the  aims  and  methods  of  the  other. 

The  professional  student  is  constantly  in  danger 
of  forgetting  that  the  spirit  of  literature,  not  its 
mere  external  form  or  garb,  should  be  the  true 
object  of  his  study.  He  forgets  that  study  means 
zeal  for,  as  well  as  application  to,  an  object,  and 
he  is  too  seldom  zealous  for  that  ideal  of  truth, 
beauty,  and  goodness  in  combination  which  gen- 
uine literature  embodies.  The  better  class  of 
amateurs,  however,  the  men  and  women  of 
acquired  or  accumulating  culture,  are  nearly 
always  more  or  less  alive  to  the  value  of  literature 
as  a  means  to  lift  themselves  from  the  plane  of 
the  real  to  that  of  the  ideal.  They  are  less  likely 
than  the  professional  student  to  use  literary  studies 
either  as  a  practical  means  of  livelihood  or  as  an 
exercise  of  their  purely  intellectual  faculties.     On 


LITERARY   STUDY  83 

the  other  hand,  the  amateur,  to  whom  literature  is 
generally  a  "side  issue,"  a  matter  apart,  is  likely  to 
make  it  a  matter  of  merely  personal  gratification. 
He  seldom  has  to  consider  the  interests  of  others, 
whether  as  an  expounder  or  a  popularizer  or  what 
we  may  call  a  literary  missionary.  He  can  hold 
his  own  opinions  regardless  of  what  others  think, 
can  be  as  erratic  as  he  pleases,  can  be  selfish,  and 
all  the  while  can  fall  back  upon  the  favorite 
maxim  of  the  Englishman,  which  is  often  ex- 
pressed in  Latin,  "De  gustibus  non  est  dispu- 
tandutn"  there  is  no  disputing  about  tastes.  This 
selfish,  nonaltruistic  attitude  toward  something 
that  is  essentially  noble  and  ^deal  cannot  be  good 
for  any  one.  Perhaps  there  ought  to  be  no 
disputing  about  tastes,  but  there  ought  to  be 
calm  discussion  of  them,  and  we  should  endeavor 
to  make  our  own  taste  and  that  of  our  neighbor 
relish  the  highest  possible  forms  of  literature  and 
art.  Hence  it  is  well  for  the  amateur  to  do  what 
the  professional  student  must  always  do,  —  con- 
sider the  tastes  of  others,  determine  what  has 
been  the  verdict  of  cultivated  readers  in  the  past 
with  regard  to  the  relative  ranking  of  the  various 
forms  of  literature  and  other  cognate  matters ; 
in   short,    equip    himself    to   pursue   his   favorite 


84  THE  AIMS   AND   METHODS   OF 

subject  in  a  critical  and  not  in  a  purely  desultory 
and   inconsequential  manner. 

But  we  have  passed,  almost  without  knowing  it, 
from  a  discussion  of  aims  to  a  discussion  of 
methods.  The  methods  of  the  professional  student 
are  naturally  such  as  we  loosely  denominate 
critical,  whether  or  not  his  bias  be  toward  history 
or  linguistics  or  aesthetics,  or  his  allegiance  be 
given  to  the  academic  or  the  impressionist  school. 
There  is  no  time  to  discuss  the  best  methods 
by  which  the  critic  or  judge  appraises  the  value 
of  a  work  of  literary  art;  what  mainly  con- 
cerns us  is  the  fact  that  the  chief  danger  which 
confronts  the  critic  or  the  teacher  is  that  his 
methods  may  easily  become  mechanical.  Against 
this  danger  his  best  safeguard  will  be  found,  I 
believe,  in  an  application  of  the  less  hard-and- 
fast  methods  of  study  pursued  by  the  amateur. 
The  professional  student  should  relax  his  mind  by 
a  limited  following  of  his  own  bent  in  reading,  by 
an  indulgence  at  times  in  uncritical  enthusiasm, 
by  a  frequent  surrender  of  his  spirit  to  the  appeals 
of  the  ideal.  He  should  remember  the  adage 
about  the  ever-stretched  bow,  and  not  forget  that 
he  has  a  soul  as  well  as  an  intellect.  On  the  con- 
trary, the  amateur  has  much  to  gain  by  endeavor- 


LITERARY   STUDY  85 

ing  to  catch  something  of  that  balanced  judgment, 
that  free  play  of  mind  which  will  always  be  found  to 
characterize  the  true  critic.  He  should  not  weight 
himself  down  with  learning  or  cease  to  enjoy  what 
he  is  laboring  to  apprehend;  but  he  should  en- 
deavor to  impart  some  system  to  his  reading,  and 
he  should  avoid  nebulosity  and  inconsistency  in 
the  judgments  he  forms  upon  literary  topics.  For 
example,  he  should  not  without  a  murmur  wade 
through  the  theology  with  which  Dante  overloads 
"The  Divine  Comedy,"  and  inveigh  against  that 
with  which  Milton  overloads  "  Paradise  Lost." 
Above  all,  he  should  avoid  the  prevailing  lack  of 
critical  catholicity.  He  should  strive,  for  instance, 
to  appreciate  both  Byron  and  Shelley,  and  not 
decry  the  one  in  order  to  laud  the  other. 

The  mention  of  Byron  leads  naturally  to  a  con- 
sideration of  the  only  other  point  I  wish  to  make  in 
this  paper.  It  is  Byron,  of  all  modern  English  poets 
—  indeed,  of  all  modern  Englishmen  save  Scott  — 
who  has  had  most  influence  upon  the  Continental 
public ;  it  is  Byron  of  all  modern  English  poets  of 
eminence,  toward  whom  most  opposition,  not  to 
say  rancor,  has  been  displayed  by  native  critics. 
Of  late  it  has  been  growing  more  and  more  plain, 
I  think,  that  British  and  American  depreciation  of 


86  THE  AIMS  AND   METHODS  OF 

Byron  has  ridiculously  overshot  the  mark ;  that 
while  certain  technical  defects,  not  obvious  to 
foreigners,  must  be  emphasized  by  Anglo-Saxon 
critics, — not  for  the  purpose  of  running  down 
Byron,  but  for  the  sake  of  warning  present  and 
future  poets  against  his  mistakes, — the  point  of 
view  of  the  foreign  critics  is  far  more  sound 
than  that  of  almost  any  critic  writing  in  English 
save  Matthew  Arnold.  Whether  this  be  true  or 
not,  it  is  abundantly  clear  that  no  student  of  litera- 
ture, whether  professional  or  amateur,  can  afford 
either  to  ignore  foreign  criticism  of  his  own  litera- 
ture or  to  neglect  to  obtain  a  fair  knowledge  at 
least  of  the  chief  European  literatures,  either  in 
the  originals  or  through  translations. 

In  this  connection  it  is  a  pleasure  to  refer  to  a 
paper  by  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse,  entitled  "  The  Isola- 
tion of  the  Anglo-Saxon  Mind,"  which  appeared 
a  few  years  ago  in  the  Cosmopolitan  magazine. 
Mr.  Gosse  has  never  given  better  proof  of  his 
critical  acumen  than  in  this  warning  against  the 
growing  insularity  of  the  British  mind.  He  plau- 
sibly—  as  it  seems  to  me,  correctly  —  attributes 
much  of  the  British  ignorance  and  indifference 
with  regard  to  what  foreigners  are  doing  in  the 
world  of  letters  to  the  rise  of  rampant  imperialism 


LITERARY   STUDY  87 

which  has  been  coincident  with  the  growth  of 
Mr.  Kipling's  popularity.  As  we  Americans  have 
done  a  little  in  the  imperial  line  ourselves,  and 
have  developed  our  own  "  strenuous "  literature, 
Mr.  Gosse  rather  logically  includes  us  with  his 
own  countrymen,  and  warns  us  also  against  the 
deplorable  effects  of  mental  isolation.  While  ad- 
mitting the  force  of  much  that  he  says,  I  cannot, 
however,  think  that  any  such  marked  isolation 
since  1895  can  be  found  in  America  as  he  seems 
to  have  observed  in  Great  Britain.  The  growing 
vogue  of  French  and  Russian  novelists  in  transla- 
tion—  Balzac,  Alphonse  Daudet,  Flaubert,  Mau- 
passant, and  even  Gautier  among  the  French, 
as  well  as  Turgenev,  Tolstoy,  and  other  Russians, 
have  recently  been  made  accessible  to  us  in  whole 
or  in  part ;  the  increasing  number  of  scholarly  and 
popular  books  on  French  and  German  literature ; 
the  lecture  courses  given  at  our  great  universities 
by  distinguished  French  scholars 1  —  these  facts 
seem  to  me  to  indicate  that  the  American  mind  is 
not  closing  itself  to  foreign  influences.  It  surely 
has  not  closed  itself  to  German  scholarship ;  and 

1  Since  these  words  were  written,  the  country  has  welcomed 
many  foreign  scholars,  who  were  brought  over  in  connection  with 
the  St.  Louis  Exposition. 


88  THE   AIMS  AND   METHODS   OF 

while  one  occasionally  reads  a  blatantly  chauvinis- 
tic article  or  an  insularly  ignorant  book,  I  suspect 
that  we  have  a  right  to  regard  ourselves  as  intel- 
lectually a  wide-awake  people. 

It  does  not  follow,  however,  that  Mr.  Gosse's 
warning  is  not  worth  heeding.  Conceit  will 
speedily  make  any  man  or  any  nation  ignorant, 
and  we  are  by  no  means  free  from  conceit,  whether 
as  individuals  or  as  a  people.  We  are  rightly  proud 
of  our  literary  achievements,  especially  of  those  of 
the  entire  race  of  which  we  have  come  to  be  a 
most  important  branch ;  but  this  should  not  blind 
us  to  the  fact  that  there  are  other  Teutonic  peoples 
with  literatures  worthy  of  study,  nor  to  the  equally 
important  fact  that  there  is  a  very  great  body  of 
Romance  literature  well  worthy  of  vying  with  our 
own  and  supplementing  it  admirably.  Yet  when 
I  assert,  as  I  am  frequently  forced  in  fairness  to  do, 
that  in  my  judgment  the  French  literature  of  the 
nineteenth  century  is  perhaps,  if  not  probably,  supe- 
rior to  that  produced  in  Great  Britain  during  the 
same  period,  it  is  always  easy  for  me  to  perceive 
that  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  the  fact  that  such  may 
possibly  be  the  case  has  not  before  dawned  upon 
any  of  the  persons  doing  me  the  honor  to  listen  to 
me.     This  is  but  to  say  that  it  rarely  occurs  to 


LITERARY   STUDY  89 

us  to  think  that  we  have  not  a  monopoly  of  literary 
as  well  as  of  all  the  other  virtues,  whereas  we  not 
only  have  no  monopoly  of  the  virtues,  we  have  not 
even  a  monopoly  of  the  vices,  other  races  pushing 
us  very  closely  in  conceit,  in  ignorance,  and  in 
their  concomitant  bellicosity.  But  surely  conceit, 
ignorance,  and  bellicosity  are  things  to  be  avoided 
by  the  attainment  of  a  cosmopolitan  outlook  upon 
literature  and  life.  If,  as  some  persons  inform  us, 
the  instinct  of  racial  self-preservation  is  opposed 
to  cosmopolitanism,  so  much  the  worse  for  the 
racial  instinct.  Humanity  as  a  whole  is  greater 
than  any  of  its  parts,  and  a  world-wide  extension 
of  the  highest  ideals  has  been  the  goal  of  reli- 
gion and  art  and  literature  and  science  since  man 
began  his  arduous,  upward  march  of  progress.  It 
is  impossible  to  believe  that  this  goal  will  ever  be 
really  lost  sight  of  or  that  it  can  be  achieved  by 
any  one  race,  particularly  by  any  race  that  relies 
on  mental  inbreeding  for  its  progeny  of  ideas,  or 
that  depends  on  its  muscles  to  do  the  work  of  its 
brains.  Mr.  Gosse  enforces  his  warning  by  a 
homely  story  of  a  young  Londoner  who  was 
brought  almost  to  his  grave  by  a  never-varied  diet 
of  mutton  chops.  It  would  be  quite  possible  for 
a  nation  to  be  brought  to  an  intellectual  grave,  or 


90  THE  AIMS  AND   METHODS   OF 

at  least  to  a  stagnation  like  that  to  be  observed  in 
China,  if,  as  is  most  improbable  at  this  stage  of 
the  history  of  Western  Christendom,  it  were,  for  any 
long  time,  to  narrow  its  mental  diet  to  the  works 
of  its  own  authors,  and  especially  to  the  works 
of  its  own  contemporary  writers. 

But  although  no  great  modern  nation  is  in 
such  a  state  of  mental  isolation,  or  is  likely  to 
reach  it,  there  are  always  millions  of  persons 
in  every  generation  who,  often  through  no  fault 
of  their  own,  suffer  from  such  isolation.  Many 
teachers,  writers,  and  scholars  suffer  from  it 
badly.  But  surely  our  ideal  literary  student 
should  not.  In  addition  to  endeavoring  to  com- 
bine in  his  work  of  self-culture  the  methods  em- 
ployed both  by  the  professional  student  and  by 
the  literary  amateur,  he  should  always  aim  to  look 
at  every  problem  that  confronts  him  from  the 
cosmopolitan  point  of  view,  a  point  of  view  not 
to  be  attained  without  labor  or  without  cordial 
sympathy  with  the  best  spirits  of  other  nations. 
For  example,  it  would  seem  very  undesirable,  for 
men  aiming  at  ideal  culture  to  educate  themselves 
without  the  least  reference  to  the  work  of  Count 
Tolstoy  or  with  an  explosive  wrath  against  it. 
Yet  not  a  few  persons  place  themselves  in  the 


LITERARY   STUDY  9 1 

one  category  or  in  the  other.  National  and 
individual  isolation  in  literature  is  just  as  much 
to  be  shunned  as  the  mechanical  methods  of  the 
professional  student  and  the  desultoriness  of  the 
amateur. 

I  am  well  aware,  in  conclusion,  that  all  that  I 
have  said  may  be  rightly  pronounced  extremely 
general,  and,  in  so  far,  more  or  less  common- 
place, inadequate,  and  difficult  of  application. 
But  it  must  be  remembered  that  literature,  holding 
as  it  does  by  the  ideal,  is,  like  the  ideal,  always 
eluding  us.  No  one  has  ever  succeeded  in  satis- 
factorily defining  literature,  much  less  in  telling 
us  exactly  how  best  to  appreciate  and  study  it. 
In  fact,  if  one  could  teach  literature  with  the 
precision  with  which  one  can  teach  mathematics, 
would  the  fascinating  study  be  itself  ?  Would  it 
not  lose  much  of  its  fascination  ? 

But  apart  from  the  comparative  impossibility 
of  laying  down  hard-and-fast,  concrete  methods 
of  studying  literature  to  advantage,  it  should  be 
remembered,  I  think,  that  a  statement  of  sound 
general  principles  is  often  of  great  positive  utility 
in  furnishing  us  with  a  proper  point  of  departure 
for  our  own  studies  and  investigations.  It  is  in 
their  statement  of  general  principles  that  the  great 


92  THE  AIMS  AND   METHODS   OF 

critics  are  as  a  rule  most  illuminating  and  instruc- 
tive. For  this  reason  the  "  Poetics  "  of  Aristotle, 
as  Mr.  Courthope  has  shown  us  in  his  admirable 
volume  entitled  "  Life  in  Poetry,  Law  in  Taste," 
is  of  as  much  value  to  us  as  it  was  to  that  philos- 
opher's contemporaries,  and  of  greater  value  than 
it  was  to  critics  of  two  centuries  ago,  because  the 
latter  emphasized  and  misapprehended  minor  and 
special  statements,  whereas  we  emphasize  rather 
Aristotle's  profound  generalizations.  For  this 
reason,  too,  I  venture  to  think,  certain  essays  of 
Matthew  Arnold's  —  for  example,  that  on  "  The 
Study  of  Poetry "  prefixed  to  Ward's  "  English 
Poets  "  —  will  mean  more  to  posterity  than  many 
a  more  brilliant  essay  of  his  contemporary, 
James  Russell  Lowell.  It  is,  I  repeat,  most 
important  to  obtain  a  safe  point  of  departure 
from  sound  generalizations.  It  is  like  having  the 
union  station  in  a  town  we  are  leaving  pointed 
out  to  us.  We  may  take  the  wrong  train  after 
we  enter  the  station ;  but  if  we  go  wandering 
about  the  town,  we  shall  get  no  train  at  all. 

I  am  not  sure,  of  course,  that  the  generaliza- 
tions I  have  given  are  worthy  of  confidence,  but 
experience  teaches  me  to  think  that  they  are. 
I  believe  that   the   reason  why  men    and  women 


LITERARY   STUDY  93 

are  turning  more  and  more  to  literary  studies  is 
that  they  find  in  them  the  readiest  means  of 
access  to  the  ideal.  I  believe  that  those  stu- 
dents who,  like  myself,  make  literature  a  pro- 
fession are  constantly  in  danger  of  mistaking  the 
letter  of  their  pursuit  for  its  spirit,  and  of  prosecut- 
ing mechanically  a  study  that  should  engage  the 
highest  faculties  of  mind  and  heart  and  soul. 
Hence  I  am  sure  that  the  professional  student 
will  find  it  profitable  always  to  bear  in  mind 
the  aims  and  methods  of  the  lovers  of  literature 
whom,  for  convenience,  we  call  amateurs.  On 
the  other  hand,  I  am  convinced  that,  while  the 
aims  of  many  amateurs  are  high,  their  methods 
of  approaching  literature  are  often  narrow,  in- 
consistent, unintelligent,  and  their  purposes  too 
self-centred.  They  may,  therefore,  profit  greatly 
by  following  the  guidance  of  competent  critics 
and  teachers  —  in  other  words,  by  acknowledg- 
ing some  authority  in  matters  of  taste  besides 
their  own  sweet  wills.  In  short,  I  give  my  alle- 
giance neither  to  an  aristocracy  of  letters,  a  so- 
called  class  of  cultured  Mandarins  in  whom  all 
learning  resides,  nor  to  a  democracy  of  letters, 
in  which  every  man's  judgment  is  as  good  as 
his   neighbor's,    but    to   a   constitutional   republic 


94       AIMS  AND  METHODS  OF  LITERARY  STUDY 

of  letters  like  the  United  States  in  politics  —  a 
republic  in  which  there  are  both  aristocratic  and 
democratic  classes  or  estates,  which  can  flourish 
only  through  mutual  intelligence  and  coopera- 
tion and  through  cultivating  the  friendliest 
international  relations.  This  means  that  we  need 
a  critic  to  do  for  students  of  British  and  Ameri- 
can literature  what  Burke  has  done  for  stu- 
dents of  British  and  American  politics.  After 
we  get  him,  we  may  perhaps  look  forward  to  the 
time  when  a  great  modern  Aristotle  shall  apply 
the  critical  method  to  the  chaos  of  knowable 
things,  and  give  the  world  a  "  Synthetic  Phi- 
losophy "  that  shall  surpass  even  the  great  struc- 
ture of  Herbert  Spencer.  In  the  meanwhile,  we 
whose  functions  and  aspirations  are  much  humbler 
may  labor  while  we  wait,  may  somewhat  lighten 
his  labors,  and  may  prepare  men  and  women  to 
appreciate  them.  For  to  prepare  men  and  women 
to  study  literature  is  really  to  prepare  them  to 
appreciate  the  highest,  mental  and  moral  achieve- 
ments. 


IV 

CRITICISM   AND   FAITH 


[The  substance   of  two  short  papers    contributed  to    The 
Churchman,  October  2,  1897,  and  February  12,  1898.] 


IV 

CRITICISM   AND    FAITH 


I  have  just  been  re-reading  one  of  the  most 
subtle  of  M.  Jules  Lemaitre's  charming  char- 
acterizations of  his  contemporaries  —  I  mean 
the  four  pages  that  he  devoted  some  years  ago 
to  M.  Ferdinand  Brunetiere  in  the  collection  of 
sketches  entitled  "Figurines."  As  the  reading 
world  has  long  known,  M.  Lemaitre  and  M.  Bru- 
netiere are  as  far  apart  as  the  poles  in  their  criti- 
cal methods  and  ideals.  Each  is  a  master  in  his 
way,  each  has  always  been  conscious  of  his 
rival's  influence  and  power;  hence  every  thrust 
and  parry  of  the  duel  they  have  waged  has  its 
interest  for  the  spectator.  In  that  particular  stage 
of  the  encounter  to  which  I  referred  above,  M. 
Lemaitre  gave  a  thrust  so  clever,  so  unexpected 
that  he  might  well  have  been  pardoned  for 
deeming    it    a    home    thrust    indeed.     I    myself 

97 


98  CRITICISM   AND   FAITH 

may  perhaps  be  pardoned  for  trying  to  give 
an  English  equivalent  of  it :  — 

"  One  must  have  seen  at  times,  in  some  con- 
vent when  the  middle  age  was  at  its  zenith,  a 
theologian-monk,  ardent  in  controversy,  ortho- 
dox, but  rash  in  his  dialectic  to  the  point  of 
making  one  tremble,  austere,  secretive,  never 
giving  a  glimpse  of  his  heart  or  of  his  sensa- 
tions, hard  in  aspect  and  a  stranger  to  every 
pleasure.  .  .  .  One  morning  his  brothers  found 
him  hanged  in  his  cell,  beneath  his  large  cruci- 
fix. What  had  taken  place?  A  drama  of 
metaphysical  speculations  ending  in  despair? 
a  drama  of  mortal  ennui  ?  or  something  still  less 
to  be  suspected  ? 

"  My  pleasantry  is  not  of  a  gay  kind,  and  it 
is  horribly  romantic.  But  M.  Brunetiere  makes 
me  think,  in  spite  of  "myself,  of  a  theologian 
damned." 

Now  I  do  not  propose  to  discuss  this  duel 
in  detail,  but  simply  wish  to  ask  why  M. 
Lemaitre  took  the  trouble  to  deliver  this  par- 
ticular thrust.  Perhaps  he  acted  on  the  prin- 
ciple that  your  own  strongest  point  is  likely  to 
be  your  adversary's  weakest.  This  may  be  a 
bad  principle,  but  Lemaitre  plainly  believed  that 


CRITICISM   AND   FAITH  99 

his  own  strength  consisted  in  an  utter  independ- 
ence of  all  critical  standards  save  those  of 
individual  preference,  and  that  Brunetiere's  weak- 
ness lay  in  his  distrust  of  himself  and  in  his 
acquiescence  in  established  opinions  and  judg- 
ments. Be  this  as  it  may,  there  is  surely  food 
for  reflection  for  us  in  the  position  taken  by  the 
impressionist  critic. 

Are  critical  standards  a  hindrance  or  a  help  ? 
or,  in  other  words,  Can  a  man  in  literature,  any 
more  than  in  life,  dispense  with  faith  in  some- 
thing higher  than  himself?  Yes,  M.  Lemaitre 
appeared  to  say;  no,  M.  Brunetiere  would  doubt- 
less have  replied.  And  yet  the  former  critic,  in  the 
essay  from  which  I  have  quoted,  assured  us  that 
his  rival  was  pessimistic  to  the  core  —  that  there- 
fore he  was  profoundly  melancholy  and  that  to 
give  himself  the  solace  of  work,  he  labored  inde- 
fatigably  "to  defend  principles  and  institutions" 
in  which  he  did  not   "believe." 

But  this  is  a  curious  role  for  a  pessimist  to  play 
—  especially  when  he  is  credited  with  being  sin- 
cere. Is  it  fair  to  call  a  man  a  pessimist  when 
his  whole  life  has  been  a  consistent  struggle  for 
principles  which,  he  claims,  possess  validity 
through  the  fact  that  they  are  based  on  something 


100  CRITICISM   AND   FAITH 

higher  than  his  own  belief  in  them  —  to  wit,  on  the 
credence  accorded  them  by  generation  upon  gen- 
eration of  thinking  men  ?  Did  not  Lemaitre 
change  rapiers  in  the  contest,  and  was  he  able  to 
handle  his  adversary's  effectively  ?  Was  he  not 
himself  the  pessimist  in  spite  of  his  jaunty  mien 
and  his  alluring  smile  ?  The  man  who  frankly 
confesses  his  disbelief  in  the  power  of  his  fellows 
to  find  standards  of  right  thinking  in  matters  of 
art  is  just  as  truly  a  pessimist  as  the  man  who 
can  discover  no  standards  of  conduct,  no  rules  of 
life  based  on  faith  in  God  and  fellow-men.  How 
shall  we  write  or  live  effectively  or  consistently  if 
we  have  not  a  pattern,  an  example,  to  guide  us  ? 
We  cannot  know  what  we  may  safely  enjoy  in 
art  unless  we  have  standards  of  judgment  and 
taste,  any  more  than  we  can  know  what  drugs  are 
wholesome  unless  we  have  standards  of  experience. 
The  coarse  novel,  the  obscene  picture,  may  be  like 
the  brilliantly  colored  drug,  attractive  to  the  eye, 
but  deadly  to  the  taste.  Now  we  should  surely 
call  a  man  who  consistently  flouted  the  lessons  of 
experience  either  a  fool  or  a  pessimist  a  outrance; 
but  experience  applies  not  merely  to  the  physical 
and  moral  spheres,  but  to  the  artistic  as  well.  To 
be  seduced  by  the  blue  depths  of  the  lake,  by  the 


CRITICISM   ANI^FAJTU  •  10 1 

red  lights  of  the  bar-room,  by  the  yellow  covers 
of  the  foul  novel  —  are  kindred  catastrophes  in  a 
sense.  All  sooner  or  later  result  in  death  of  one 
sort  or  another,  and  all  proceed,  either  from  igno- 
rance or  thoughtlessness  —  cases  we  are  not  here 
considering  —  or  from  the  wilful  setting  up  of 
one's  own  judgment  against  the  experience  of 
the  race.  Self-assertion  is  a  basis  if  not  the  chief 
basis  of  pessimism,  and  faith  is  the  main  basis  of 
optimism,  nor  do  all  M.  Lemaitre's  subtle  powers 
of  fence  save  him  from  falling  at  last  before  the 
keen  point  of  this  fundamental  truth. 

M.  Brunetiere  may  have  many  points  in  com- 
mon with  the  mediaeval  monk  of  M.  Lemaitre's 
imagination.  His  recent  turning  to  Roman  Cathol- 
icism seems  to  show  this.  He  has  faith  in 
ideals  and  standards,  and  he  believes  that  it  is  his 
duty  to  try  to  win  the  world  to  these ;  but  he  has 
not  shut  himself  up  in  a  cell,  and  so  long  as  he 
follows  the  precepts  of  the  gospel  of  work,  he 
is  not  likely  to  hang  himself.  If  any  such  fate 
could  legitimately  have  been  predicted  ten  years 
ago  as  in  store  for  either  of  the  rivals,  it  was  for 
M.  Lemaitre  himself.  It  might  have  been  im- 
agined that,  jaded  with  a  multiplicity  of  sensations 
leading  no  whither,  he  would  some  day  realize  that 


1 02  CRITICISM   AND   FAITH 

life  had  no  charms  left,  and  that  some  one  would 
be  impelled  to  draw  a  companion  picture  repre- 
senting him  as  a  sated  Epicurean  lying  dead  and 
deserted  amid  the  paraphernalia  of  a  soulless 
luxury.  Fortunately,  neither  rival  has  yet  perished 
either  by  his  own  or  by  the  other's  hand,  and  the 
world  has  had  so  many  larger  and  more  important 
contests  to  witness  that  it  has  almost  forgotten 
their  various  passages  at  arms.  Some  of  us  have 
not  forgotten,  however,  the  sides  on  which  they 
fought,  nor  are  we  disconcerted  in  having  M. 
Brunetiere  of  late  sally  forth  in  defence  of  author- 
ity in  another  garb  against  other  foes.  We  still 
remember  some  of  the  lessons  we  learned  from 
him.  We  still  believe  that  here  in  this  new  land 
of  half-formed  ideals  we  can  by  no  means  afford 
to  dissociate  art  from  conduct,  that  in  both  we 
have  continual  need  of  standards — that  is,  of  faith 
in  the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good,  not  as  they 
merely  seem  to  be  such  to  us,  but  as  they  always 
have  existed  and  always  will  exist  beyond  and 
above  ourselves  within  the  bosom  of  God. 

II 

That  faith  of  some  sort  is  as  necessary  to  the 
critic  as  it  is  to  the  man  who  wishes  to  lead  a  good 


CRITICISM   AND   FAITH  103 

life  and  do  a  good  work  in  this  perplexing  world 
is  a  point  not  only,  I  hope,  brought  out  by  the  com- 
ments made  above,  but  also,  it  would  seem,  in- 
volved in  what  was  said  in  a  former  paper  about 
the  propriety  of  laying  emphasis  upon  the  value  of 
popular  judgment  in  literary  and  artistic  matters. 
Yet  I  fancy  that  most  persons,  if  they  were  to 
think  about  the  matter  at  all,  would  opine  at  first 
blush  that  good  criticism  is  much  more  an  affair 
of  scepticism  than  one  of  faith. 

Perhaps  one  reason  why  so  many  people,  for- 
getting that  comparatively  sterile  periods  seem  to 
be  needed  in  order  to  enable  creative  forces  to 
gather  strength,  regret  the  fact  that  the  period  in 
which  we  live  is  on  the  whole  one  of  criticism 
rather  than  of  consummate  literary  creation,  is  to 
be  found  in  the  close  affiliation  scepticism  seems 
to  have  with  criticism,  scepticism  being  naturally 
repellent  to  normally  healthy  minds.  There  is 
no  inherent  reason  why  criticism  should  be  pre- 
dominantly sceptical  in  character,  but  it  often  is  so, 
and  the  public  seems  generally  to  assume  that  it 
will  be  so.  Throughout  the  nineteenth  century  it 
was  the  sceptical  side  of  criticism  that  forced  itself 
upon  public  attention,  mainly  because  it  exhibited 
piquant  and  sensational  characteristics.     There  is 


104  CRITICISM  AND   FAITH 

a  plain  element  of  the  sensational  in  the  mainte- 
nance of  the  Baconian  authorship  of  the  Shaksper- 
ian  plays,  which  is  not  entirely  lacking  in  the 
criticism  that  makes  Homer  a  myth  and  Captain 
John  Smith  a  mere  braggadocio.  One  can  be 
much  more  piquant  when  one  is  combating  a 
theory  or  an  opinion  universally  held  to  be  true, 
than  when  one  is  saying  for  the  thousandth  time 
what  one  is  expected  to  say. 

Of  late  there  has  seemed,  however,  to  be  a  feel- 
ing among  all  classes  of  critics  that  the  sceptical 
spirit  has  led  them  too  far,  and  perhaps  it  is  not 
too  much  to  say  that  a  reaction  is  slowly  setting  in 
which  will  tend  to  restore  to  modern  criticism 
some  of  the  popular  respect  it  has  lost.  The 
late  Mr.  Fiske's  defence  of  the  veracity  of  Captain 
John  Smith  is  an  example  in  point,  because  it  was 
based  on  the  strictly  scientific  desire  to  find  an 
explanation  for  something  posited  as  true,  rather 
than  on  the  purely  sceptical  desire  to  sweep 
away  something  that  did  not  square  with  normal 
experience.  Still  more  striking,  perhaps,  is  the 
attitude  of  a  few  critics  toward  Defoe,  whose 
character  cannot  be  completely  rehabilitated  but 
whose  positive  statements  no  sensible  man  is  likely 
to  dismiss  jauntily  as  the  utterances  of  "  the  great- 


CRITICISM   AND   FAITH  105 

est  liar  that  ever  lived,"  now  that  Mr.  G.  A.  Aitken 
has  clearly  proved  that  all  the  details  given  in  the 
famous  ghost  story  of  "  Mrs.  Veal "  were  obtained 
by  Defoe  in  precisely  the  way  that  would  be 
employed  by  a  modern  reporter  sent  to  investi- 
gate a  matter  interesting  to  the  public. 

This  anti-sceptical  tendency,  which  may  be 
observed  throughout  the  world  of  thought,  will 
be  of  great  importance  in  literary  and  artistic 
criticism  if  it  is  allowed  free  play.  The  popular 
standing  of  an  author  or  an  artist  of  established 
reputation  is  the  posited  fact,  and  truly  scientific 
criticism  will  endeavor  to  account  for  this  reputa- 
tion, to  maintain  it,  and  even  to  unfold  it,  rather 
than  to  assert  that  modern  taste  finds  little  to 
enjoy  in  what  has  pleased  our  ancestors.  It  is 
much  easier  to  decry  and  endeavor  to  dethrone, 
than  it  is  to  serve  loyally  in  matters  of  criticism. 
If  we  succeed  in  showing  that  some  long-popular 
author  is  after  all  really  of  no  great  consequence ; 
if  we  prove  that  a  forgotten  writer  is  in  fact  deserv- 
ing of  immortal  bays,  we  naturally  expect  that  we 
shall  come  in  for  more  glory  than  we  should  if  we 
were  to  choose  the  less  ambitious  part  of  praising, 
in  our  turn,  what  has  long  been  regarded  as  a  just 
subject  of  praise. 


106  CRITICISM   AND   FAITH 

This  is  but  to  say  that  if  there  is  a  reaction 
against  sceptical  criticism,  it  will  make  itself  felt 
in  matters  literary  and  artistic  by  encouraging 
academic  at  the  expense  of  impressionist  criticism. 
The  impressionist  is  in  most  cases  sceptical  of  the 
judgments  of  others,  because  he  is  too  prone  to  over- 
value his  own.  But  the  desire  to  pass  unique  judg- 
ments of  one's  own  leads  at  once  to  the  desire  to 
sweep  away  that  which  is  posited  about  authors 
and  books,  painters  and  pictures,  and  the  sweep- 
ing away  of  posited  judgments  produces  as  dis- 
astrous effects  in  literary  criticism  as  the  more 
obvious  but  closely  related  sceptical  methods  of 
treatment  produce  in  historical  studies. 

It  is  almost  needless  to  say,  in  conclusion,  that 
I  do  not  wish  to  be  accused  of  heralding  a  return 
of  the  old,  unquestioning  spirit  of  acceptance  of 
all  that  antiquity  has  handed  down  to  us.  Modern 
science  has  done  its  work  too  thoroughly  for  such 
a  spirit  to  be  again  dominant  among  cultivated 
people,  or  for  any  sane  man  to  wish  that  it  should 
become  dominant.  My  desire  is  simply  to  point 
out  the  fact  that  if  the  purely  sceptical  spirit  in 
criticism  continues  to  be  held  in  check,  sounder 
methods  of  study  will  be  applied  to  literature  and 
the  arts,  the  judgments  of  past  generations  will  be 


CRITICISM   AND   FAITH  1 07 

treated  with  respect  and  modified  only  when  neces- 
sary, and  academic  criticism  will  receive  its  due 
recognition.  There  will  be  fewer  surprises  in  store 
for  the  readers  of  our  magazines,  who  will  not  be 
confronted  each  month  with  some  new  candidate 
for  fame,  but  the  great  masters  will  receive  more 
and  more  adequate  comprehension  and  applause. 


LITERATURE   AND   SCIENCE 


[Delivered  before  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  of  Lehigh  University, 
June,  1904.] 


V 

LITERATURE   AND   SCIENCE 

It  is  very  commonly  assumed  that  there  is  a 
necessary  antagonism  of  ends  and  methods  be- 
tween those  who  devote  themselves  to  scientific 
pursuits  and  those  who  occupy  themselves  with 
any  of  the  fine  arts,  whether  as  a  calling  or  as  a 
pastime.  That  this  antagonism  is  often  visible 
enough  will  scarcely  be  denied  —  certainly  not  by 
any  one  who  has  ever  sat  in  a  college  faculty. 
That  it  is  necessary  is  something  I  have  not  been 
able  to  perceive  during  the  nearly  twenty  years 
of  my  academic  experience.  I  have  never  looked 
upon  my  scientific  associates  as  rivals  to  be  fought 
with  and  circumvented,  and  I  have  striven,  while 
maintaining  my  own  devotion  to  literature,  to 
give  them  no  occasion  to  view  me  in  such  a  sin- 
ister light.  Perhaps  this  fact  will  serve  as  an 
excuse  for  my  rashness  in  attempting  to  discuss 
afresh  the  very  large  and  time  worn  subject  of 
the  relations  of   science  and  literature,  especially 


112  LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE 

as  constituent  parts  of  that  indefinite  something 
denominated  culture. 

In  such  a  discussion  the  first  step,  obviously,  is 
to  try  to  define  the  terms  employed.  Here,  how- 
ever, we  encounter  an  initial  difficulty  which  will 
prove  insuperable  if  we  are  strenuous  in  main- 
taining our  rights.  Scientists  may  have  defined 
science  in  a  manner  satisfactory  to  themselves,  but 
I  am  very  sure  that  no  literary  man's  definition 
of  literature  has  ever  long  satisfied  any  other  lit- 
erary man.  It  goes  without  saying  that  no  man  of 
letters  (if  only  for  shame's  sake)  would  allow  a 
scientist  to  define  literature  for  him.  Hence,  if 
we  insist  upon  definitions,  this  discussion  may  as 
well  be  adjourned  indefinitely. 

There  is,  however,  another  plane  than  that  of 
accepted  definitions,  upon  which  the  scientist  and 
the  literary  man  may  meet  for  discussion.  It  is 
the  Socratic  plane  —  the  plane  of  consecutive 
questions  and  answers,  without,  however,  the 
trap-door  through  which  Socrates's  opponents 
used  to  disappear   in   an   undignified    manner. 

Let  each  ask  himself  what  he  is  about,  what 
his  primary  concern  is  as  scientist  or  man  of 
letters  respectively.  The  scientist  will  probably 
reply  that  he  is  striving  to  advance   the   bounds 


LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE  113 

of  systematic  human  knowledge.  The  historian, 
the  biographer,  or  the  critic  might  conceivably 
make  this  answer  also;  but,  if  a  true  man  of 
letters,  he  would  at  once  add  something  to  the 
effect  that  he  was  at  the  same  time  and  with 
equal,  or  at  least  considerable  zeal,  striving  to 
increase  the  sum  of  human  pleasure.  The  scien- 
tist might  rejoin  that  such  was  his  purpose  as 
well,  and  he  might  easily  show  how  the  discov- 
eries of  science  have  redounded  to  human  happi- 
ness. But  when  the  two  had  threshed  their 
meanings  out,  it  would  probably  appear  that  the 
end  of  giving  pleasure  to  others  was  only  a  sub- 
sidiary one  with  the  scientist,  whereas  it  was  a 
primary  and  vital  one  with  the  literary  historian, 
biographer,  or  critic.  I  may  illustrate  the  point 
I  am  trying  to  bring  out,  by  saying  that  the  histo- 
rian who  confessed  that  he  had  but  one  primary 
aim,  viz.,  to  add  to  the  sum  of  human  knowledge 
about  a  particular  period  of  a  nation's  history, 
would  at  once  be  disowned  by  men  of  letters.  If 
the  scientists  would  not  receive  him  on  account  of 
the  fact  that  he  could  not  apply  absolutely  rigid 
tests  to  determine  the  credibility  of  the  results  of 
his  work,  the  rejected  individual  would  have  to 
flock  with  the  economists,  the  students  of  politics, 


114  LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE 

law,  and  similar  subjects — that  is,  with  what  we 
may  call  the  semi-scientists,  among  whom  he  could 
doubtless  make  himself  comfortable. 

But  historians,  biographers,  and  critics  who  do 
not  regard  the  extension  of  the  bounds  of  system- 
atized knowledge  as  their  sole  primary  aim,  and 
are  hence  entitled  to  call  themselves  men  of  let- 
ters, are  generally  regarded,  after  all,  as  servants 
or  suspected  aliens  within  the  realm  of  literature. 
Some  of  them  actually  subscribe  to  their  own  in- 
feriority to  a  minor  poet  or  a  third-rate  novelist ; 
but  this  will  probably  not  be  for  long,  since  minor 
poets  and  third-rate  novelists  are  increasing  with 
such  rapidity  under  our  tolerant  laws  that  the  day 
may  be  not  far  distant  when  writing  poems  and 
novels  will  be  almost  as  commonplace  a  domestic 
phenomenon  as  china  painting  and  embroidering 
now  are.  We  are  not  concerned,  however,  with 
the  ranking  of  authors  or  with  the  loss  of  dis- 
tinction which  some  of  them  may  incur,  if  books 
continue  to  be  manufactured  and  sold  like  shoes. 
What  we  wish  to  know  is  how  a  truly  great  poet 
or  novelist  would  answer  our  question  as  to  the 
primary  purpose  for  which  he  writes. 

Whatever  form  his  answer  might  take,  it  is 
almost  inconceivable,  I    think,  that   it  should   be 


LITERATURE  AND  SCIENCE  115 

that  of  the  scientist,— :to  extend  the  bounds  of  sys- 
tematized knowledge.  The  great  creative  writers 
do  extend  the  bounds  of  knowledge  very  materi- 
ally in  certain  ways  ;  but  their  ways  are  not  those 
of  the  scientist,  the  knowledge  they  furnish  is 
rarely  of  the  kind  he  deals  with,  —  though  Tenny- 
son, I  believe,  did  give,  or  else  might  have  given, 
a  fact  or  two  to  the  botanist,  —  and  the  extension 
of  the  bounds  of  knowledge  is  scarcely,  if  at  all, 
in  their  thoughts  when  they  are  in  the  act  of 
composing.  As  for  the  lesser  creative  writers,  — 
especially  in  these  days  of  art  for  art's  sake,  —  it 
is  needless  to  say  that  they  would  disclaim  any 
intention  of  trying  to  extend  the  bounds  of  human 
knowledge.  Indeed,  how  could  many  of  them 
make  such  a  claim  without  turning  scarlet? 

But  our  questioning  has  not  carried  us  very  far. 
Scientists  and  semi-scientists,  from  the  greatest 
to  the  least,  have  one  clear,  common  end  in  view. 
This  end  is  shared  partly  only  by  some  kinds 
of  writers,  while,  if  writers  as  a  class  have  one 
clear,  common  end  in  view,  it  is  certainly  not  that 
of  the  scientists.  Given  that  most  normal  of  hu- 
man characteristics,  —  the  desire  to  pursue  one's 
own  end  unimpeded,  to  make  it  triumph  over  the 
end  another  is  pursuing,  to  attract  other  adherents 


Il6  LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE 

to  it,  —  why  should  we  not  suppose  that  scientists 
and  men  of  letters  will  maintain  more  or  less 
antagonistic  relations  till, time  is  no  more?  What 
wonder  is  it  that  the  present  poet  laureate  should 
complain  that  in  this  age  of  science  there  is  a 
marked  decrease  of  interest  in  the  higher  forms 
of  poetry  ?  What  wonder  is  it  that  history  and 
biography,  categories  of  literature  the  spirit  of 
which  is  least  alien  to  that  of  science,  should 
daily  be  gaining  favor,  as  we  are  told,  with  serious 
readers  ?  What  wonder,  finally,  that  in  our 
schools,  colleges,  and  universities,  scientific  and 
semi-scientific  studies  have  not  only  been  winning 
their  rightful  place  in  the  curriculum,  but  have 
taken  on  an  aggressive  attitude  that  threatens  the 
very  existence  of  certain  more  or  less  literary 
courses,  particularly  those  in  Greek  and  Latin, 
without  which  the  study  of  literature  in  the 
vernacular  can  be  prosecuted  only  in  a  halting 
and  incomplete  manner  ? 

That  the  day  will  ever  come  when  no  professor 
of  physics  will  be  impelled  to  ask,  as  one  did  the 
other  day  in  New  York,  why  boys  would  not  be 
better  employed  in  studying  the  motions  of  the 
planets  than  in  learning  the  names  of  obscure  and 
obscene   heathen   divinities,   I    hesitate  to  affirm. 


LITERATURE   AND   SCIENCE  117 

Such  a  protesting  professor  will  always  have  Plato 
for  something  of  a  prototype  and  a  long  line  of 
utilitarians  for  successors.  Much  less  do  I  dare 
to  affirm  that  the  day  will  ever  come  in  which 
artists  and  men  of  letters,  whenever  they  can 
indulge  their  prejudices  in  safety,  will  cease  to 
display  ignorance  and  bad  temper  at  the  mention 
of  science.  But  I  should  also  and  to  an  equal 
degree  be  disinclined  to  asseverate  that  class 
hatred  will  cease  short  of  some  sort  of  a  millen- 
nium, or  that  nations  will  in  any  calculable  future 
refrain  from  settling  certain  classes  of  disputes  by 
the  barbaric  means  of  war  ;  yet  I  am  willing  to 
maintain  that  class  hatred  and  wars  between  na- 
tions are  unnecessary  evils,  on  the  supposition  that 
man  is  a  free  agent  capable  of  distinguishing  and 
choosing  the  better  from  the  worse.  In  other 
words,  the  fact  that  something  will  probably  long 
continue  to  exist  should  not  deter  us  from  ques- 
tioning whether  it  ought  to  exist  —  should  not 
disincline  us  to  ask, 

"  Can  such  things  be, 
And  overcome  us  like  a  summer's  cloud, 
Without  our  special  wonder  ? " 

Now   I    am  never   made   aware  of   the  antag- 
onisms that  exist  among  men  to  whom  the  things 


Il8  LITERATURE   AND    SCIENCE 

of  the  mind  are  of  primary  concern,  without  a  very 
special  wonder.  Scientists  and  artists,  men  of 
letters  and  scholars,  may  find  it  difficult  to  dis- 
cover a  clear  purpose  held  in  common ;  but  one 
and  all,  in  accomplishing  their  respective  tasks, 
they  are  envisaging  this  mysterious  universe  of 
which  they  are  insignificant  parts.  One  and  all 
they  stand  in  the  presence  of  an  Awful  Reality, 
who  to  the  poet  may  be 

"  God  —  the  mighty  source 
Of  all  things  —  the  stupendous  force 

On  which  all  strength  depends ; 
From  whose  right  arm,  beneath  whose  eyes, 
All  period,  power,  and  enterprise 

Commences,  reigns,  and  ends  —  " 

or  who  to  the  philosopher  may  be  that  "  insoluble 
enigma,"  which  man  "  evermore  perceives  to  be 
an  insoluble  enigma."  In  such  a  presence  how 
are  human  antagonisms  possible?  How,  except 
on  the  supposition  that  the  clear,  common  end 
which  we  found  for  the  scientists  and  ceased  to 
inquire  for  in  the  case  of  the  men  of  letters,  is 
not,  after  all,  the  ultimate  end  for  either  ?  If  the 
final  end  of  science  and  the  final  end  of  literature 
and  every  other  art  be  not  to  envisage  "  steadily  " 
and    "whole,"    as   best   may   be,    this  mysterious 


LITERATURE  AND    SCIENCE  119 

universe  and  to  bring  the  minds  and  souls  of 
scientists  and  artists  and  writers  and  of  all  who 
profit  from  their  labors  most  completely  and  be- 
comingly into  the  presence  of  the  Awful  Reality, 
are  science  and  art  and  literature  fully  compre- 
hended by  their  votaries  ? 

It  is  most  necessary  at  this  point  to  avoid  all 
temptation  or  inclination  to  drop  into  cant  —  that 
besetting  weakness  of  Anglo-Saxons.  It  is  so 
easy  to  talk  about  wonder  and  awe  without  feel- 
ing them,  so  easy  to  miss  the  solid  and  neces- 
sary facts  of  life  while  groping  about  in  the 
spacious  and  nebulous  region  of  ideas.  Yet  can 
the  scientific  mind  that  stops  short  in  its  probing, 
that  does  not  question  until  it  encounters  the  in- 
scrutable mystery  of  the  universe,  be  regarded  as 
fulfilling  its  functions  properly  and  completely,  or 
can  the  creative  faculty  of  the  artist  that  does  not 
impinge  upon  the  same  inscrutable  mystery  be 
looked  on  as  worthy  of  special  admiration  ?  Did 
not  Newton  and  Darwin,  Shakspere  and  Milton, 
however  different  the  paths  they  blazed  through 
the  forests  of  nature  and  life,  emerge  upon  the 
shore  of  the  same  infinite  ocean  ?  And  unless  we 
also,  following  paths  already  cut  or  making  them 
for  ourselves,  finally  get  a  glimpse  of 


120  LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE 

"  that  immortal  sea 
Which  brought  us  hither," 

will  not  our  last  state  be  that  of  wanderers  lost  in 
tangled  and  impenetrable  woods  ?  We  may  make  a 
circle  with  our  steps  and  fancy  we  are  progressing, 
or  we  may  lie  down  in  a  spot  which  in  our  hallu- 
cination we  take  to  be  our  true  goal ;  yet,  if  we 
do  these  things,  shall  we  be  any  the  less  pitiable 
because  we  are  complacent?  But  do  those  who 
emerge  on  the  shore  of  the  infinite  sea  strive  to 
drown  with  their  objurgations  and  rival  clamors 
the  rhythmical  plash  of  its  waves  ?  Or  is  it 
sensible  for  wanderers  in  a  forest  to  pelt  one 
another  with  missiles,  when  their  paths  happen 
to  cross  or  to  lie  side  by  side  ? 

But  it  may  be  urged  that,  if  all  this  is  not  cant, 
it  is  very  figurative  and  far  from  being  clear-cut 
and  definitive.  Such  an  objection  has  force, 
although  it  should  be  remembered  that  many 
high  forms  of  truth  are  only  with  great  diffi- 
culty, if  at  all,  to  be  expressed  in  terms  of  the 
concrete  and  definite.  I  will  confess  further  that 
in  one  important  particular  my  figure  breaks  down. 
He  who  has  once  emerged  upon  the  shore  of  the 
infinite  ocean  becomes  endowed  with  a  power 
never   granted  to  toilers  through  actual  and  tan- 


LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE  121 

gible  forests.  He  may  renew  his  toils  and  wan- 
derings in  other  parts  of  the  thickets  of  life  and 
nature,  and  yet  always  have  the  power,  not 
merely  of  remembering  the  sight  of  the  great 
ocean,  but  of  transporting  himself  at  any  moment 
to  its  margin.  To  put  it  differently,  the  true  scien- 
tist and  the  true  artist  or  man  of  letters,  having 
once  grasped  firmly  the  idea  that  his  ultimate  pur- 
pose is  to  help  on  man's  interpretation  of  the  uni- 
verse in  its  marvellous  entirety,  never  lets  go  that 
idea,  even  when  he  is  absorbed  in  a  delicate  piece 
of  investigation,  or  in  painting  a  miniature,  or  in 
polishing  a  sonnet.  Adequately  to  express  this 
great  truth  in  figurative  terms  of  concrete  human 
action  will  be,  I  think,  impossible  so  long  as  a  man 
is  unable  to  be  in  two  places  at  the  same  time.  It 
is  none  the  less  certain,  however,  that  the  really 
successful  creative  mind,  whether  in  science  or  in 
art,  moves  simultaneously  in  the  two  spheres  of  the 
finite  and  the  infinite,  and  that  this  is  not  a  meta- 
physical impossibility,  since  the  larger  sphere  in- 
cludes the  lesser. 

Perhaps  it  is  now  sufficiently  plain,  not  only 
why  opposition  between  scientists  and  men  of 
letters  is  not  necessary,  but  also  why  they  should 
regard  themselves  as  brothers  ever  ready  to  lend  a 


122  LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE 

helping  hand  to  one  another.  In  many  particu- 
lars the  subject-matters  with  which  they  deal  re- 
spectively, the  methods  they  apply,  the  proximate 
ends  and  purposes  they  have  in  view,  are  so  dis- 
tinct that  it  is  no  wonder  that  at  first  thought 
occasions  for  misunderstanding,  if  not  of  strife, 
present  themselves.  But  in  the  final  analysis 
their  main  end  is  a  common  one,  however  dif- 
ferent the  means  by  which  it  is  to  be  accom- 
plished. That  end,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  more 
complete  interpretation  of  the  universe  in  its  en- 
tirety, and  the  chief  reason  why  contentions  arise 
between  the  two  classes  of  interpreters  is  that 
neither  fully  and  continually  realizes  that  the 
universe  is  in  itself,  for  the  purposes  of  ultimate 
interpretation,  an  indissoluble  entity.  We,  being 
finite  and  a  part  of  it,  portion  it  out  into  mechan- 
ical and  metaphysical  segments  and  devote  our- 
selves to  the  study  and  understanding  of  one  or 
more  of  these  purely  relative  and  often  purely 
ideal  divisions,  forgetting  the  while  that  we  are 
dealing  only  with  the  perceptions  of  our  senses 
and  the  creations  of  our  intellectual  and  imagi- 
native faculties,  and  not  with  that  indissoluble 
entity,  the  interpretation  or  partial  interpreta- 
tion of  which,  though  it  be  the  mystery  of  mys- 


LITERATURE   AND   SCIENCE  1 23 

teries,  is  also  the  desire  of  desires  and  the  dream 
of  dreams  of  the  aspiring  soul  of  man.  It  is  our 
doom,  of  course,  since  we  are  finite,  never  to 
interpret  the  universe  completely,  and  it  is  also 
our  doom  to  move  forward  only  by  slow,  almost 
imperceptible  degrees  toward  such  a  partial  inter- 
pretation of  it  as  will  not  seem  unworthy  of  intelli- 
gent beings.  Hence  there  should  be  no  repining 
at  the  necessity  we  are  under  of  dealing  with  per- 
ceived or  imagined  segments  instead  of  with  the 
transcendant  whole.  Yet,  while  in  our  finiteness 
we  are  so  constituted  that  we  can  take  pleasure  in 
dealing  with  the  parts  we  perceive  and  create,  in 
our  infinite  aspirations  we  are  dwarfed  and  emas- 
culated if  we  do  not  keep  always  before  us  the 
entire  universe,  material  and  spiritual,  —  in  other 
words,  the   ultimate    phenomenon. 

But  the  moment  we  grasp  the  idea  that  the 
mind's  problem  of  problems  is  to  square  itself 
with  the  universe,  it  becomes  apparent  that  the 
larger  and  more  comprehensive  the  mind  can  be 
made,  the  wider  view  it  will  take  of  the  universe 
and  the  nearer  it  will  come  to  the  desiderated 
interpretation.  Civilization  is  but  another  name 
for  this  endlessly  repeated  process  of  squaring 
the  mind  of  the  race  with  the  universe.      Yet  we 


124  LITERATURE   AND   SCIENCE 

surely  do   not  make  the  mind    larger  and   more 
comprehensive  if  we  insist  that  it  shall  deal  in  the 
main  only  with  sense-perceptions  or  in  the  main 
only  with  ideas,  or  if  we  insist  that  it  shall  employ 
only  one  set  of  methods  with  which  to  envisage  the 
universe.     Nor  do  we  display  much  acumen,  if  in 
the  presence  of  an  indissoluble  phenomenon,  we 
spend    our   time  in  wrangling  over   the    fruitless 
question  as  to  which  of  two  or  more  sets  of  rela- 
tive phenomena  may  fairly  be  said  to  be  of  greater 
or   greatest   importance.       I    may  be   preternatu- 
rally  dull,  but  I  must  frankly  confess  that  I  have 
never  been  able  to  see  how  science  can  be  more 
important  than  art  or  art  than  science.     Both  are 
indispensable  to  any  interpretation  of  the  universe, 
if  only  for  the  reason  that  the  one  answers  chiefly 
to  the  intellectual,  the  other  chiefly  to  the  emo- 
tional nature  of   man,  the  interpreter.     The  uni- 
verse in  which  we  live  is  one  of  passions  as  well 
as  of  stars,  of  stages  of  thought  as  well  as  of  geo- 
logical strata,  of  sighs  of  love  and  sorrow  as  well 
as  of  cataclysmal  forces.     Perhaps  on  "this  dim 
spot  which  men  call  earth  "  the  steam-engine  has 
made  a  deeper  impression  than  the  sonnet,  but  the 
one  is,  in  the  last  analysis,  no  less  wonderful  than 
the  other,  and  to  leave  either  out  of  account  in  an 


LITERATURE   AND    SCIENCE  1 25 

attempted  interpretation  of  the  universe  would  be 
fatal.  Yet  how  often  do  we  see  the  poet  and  the 
mechanical  engineer  bound  together  by  the  ties 
of  intelligent  sympathy  ?  How  often  does  a  pro- 
fessor of  literature  urge  his  students  to  give  a  fair 
amount  of  their  time  to  his  colleague  who  lec- 
tures on  chemistry,  and  how  often  does  the  lat- 
ter return  the  courtesy  ?  But  such  sympathies 
and  such  courtesies  should  not  be  rare  among 
men  whose  common  concern  is  with  the  won- 
ders of  the  universe. 

If,  then,  there  is  one  idea  that  ought  to  emerge 
more  prominently  and  frequently  than  any  other 
in  a  discussion  of  the  relations  of  science  and  liter- 
ature, —  or  science  and  art,  if  you  will,  for  litera- 
ture in  this  connection  must  be  conceived  as  an 
art,  —  it  is  the  idea  of  catholicity.  Man,  the  inter- 
preter, is  a  whole,  and  the  universe  which  he  must 
strive  to  interpret,  if  he  is  not  to  live  in  it  as  a 
mere  animal,  is  a  whole  also.  The  whole  inter- 
preter must  take  a  whole  view  of  the  whole  phe- 
nomenon —  that  is  to  say,  man,  to  be  worthy  of 
his  high  attributes,  must  be  catholic  in  his  aims 
and  methods,  especially  when  he  is  bringing  his 
powers  to  bear  on  subjects  of  vast  importance  to 
his  spiritual,  mental,  and  bodily  welfare.     He  does 


126  LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE 

injustice  to  himself  when  he  fancies  that  he  can 
pursue  and  capture  Truth  without  at  the  same 
time  pursuing  and  capturing  her  sister  Beauty. 
Indeed,  man  must  not,  like  Apollo,  pursue  a  single 
nymph  —  he  must  pursue  Three  Graces  whose 
names  are  Truth,  Beauty,  and  Goodness.  If  he 
pursues  a  sole  and  single  object,  no  matter  how 
desirable,  he  must  expect  a  metamorphosis  and 
a  frustration.  Instead  of  the  nymph  the  god 
grasped  a  bough  of  laurel,  from  the  leaves  of  which 
he  wove  a  garland  for  his  brow.  So  the  scientist 
pursuing  Truth  alone  may  grasp  new  and  impor- 
tant facts,  the  poet  pursuing  Beauty  alone  may 
snatch  exquisite  harmonies  and  images,  and  both 
may  gain  plaudits  that  will  partly  repay  them  for 
their  endeavors ;  but  neither  will  achieve  the  true 
object  of  his  pursuit,  for  facts  are  not  Truth  nor 
are  exquisite  harmonies  and  images  Beauty,  any 
more  than  the  shapely  laurel  was  the  flying 
nymph.  This  is  old  doctrine,  and  never  better 
expressed  than  by  Keats  when  he  wrote 

"  <  Beauty  is  Truth,  Truth  Beauty '  —  this  is  all 
Ye  know  on  earth  and  all  ye  need  to  know." 

Add  the  third  member  of  the  trinity,  Goodness, 
and  we  have  the  Golden  Rule  transferred  from  the 


LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE  I  27 

sphere  of  conduct  to  that  of  thought  and  emotion. 
But  it  is  only  the  catholic  man  who  can  come  near 
to  living  up  to  the  Golden  Rule. 

What  now  should  be  the  practical  outcome  of 
the  adoption  of  a  catholic  attitude  toward  the 
claims  of  science  and  art  —  especially  literature  — 
as  constituent  parts  in  human  education  or  cul- 
ture ?  In  the  first  place,  it  would  seem  that  every 
catholic-minded  man  should  rejoice  in  all  the 
triumphs  of  science  and  in  all  the  achievements  of 
art;  that  jealousy  should  be  banished,  save  that 
commendable  jealousy  for  the  honor  of  one's 
chosen  pursuit ;  that  the  complete  democratic 
equality  of  all  the  arts  and  sciences  should  be  pro- 
claimed throughout  the  thinking  and  the  reading 
world.  The  last  statement  does  not  mean,  of 
course,  that  there  should  be  no  differences  of  pres- 
tige among  the  arts  and  sciences,  any  more  than 
the  assertion  of  democratic  equality  in  the  sphere 
of  politics  means  that  descent  from  a  long  line  of 
honorable  ancestors  should  carry  no  weight  in  a 
normally  constituted  community.  You  can  no 
more  put  history  out  of  doors  with  a  fork  than 
you  can  expel  nature  with  the  same  instrument. 
The  poet  Horace,  whose  words  I  have  just  used, 
derives  much  of  his  prestige  from  the  fact  that  his 


128  LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE 

poems  have  been  handed  down  for  nearly  two 
thousand  years ;  but  if  he  were  writing  to-day,  he 
would  enjoy,  rightly  or  wrongly,  a  sort  of  prestige 
over  many  other  writers  and  over  certain  classes 
of  scientific  investigators  merely  because  he  would 
come  before  the  public  crowned  with  the  venerable 
title  of  poet.  The  mineralogist,  on  the  other  hand, 
in  spite  of  the  truth  and  beauty  of  the  systems  of 
crystallography  he  expounds,  must  long  expect  to 
have  his  books  read  and  his  classes  attended,  save 
in  rare  cases,  only  by  a  few  persons  of  special 
endowments  and  proclivities.  But  the  mineralogist 
has  his  compensations,  and  he  can, take  his  stand 
by  the  side  of  the  poet  upon  the  margin  of  the 
infinite  sea.  He,  too,  is  helping  man  to  interpret 
the  universe. 

Another  consequence  of  the  adoption  of  a  catho- 
lic attitude  toward  the  respective  claims  of  science 
and  literature  in  education  ought  to  be  a  cessation  of 
wrangling  among  those  who  frame  the  curriculums 
of  our  schools  and  colleges.  Discussion  as  to  the 
relative  amounts  of  each  to  be  allowed,  as  to  the 
divisions  of  students  to  be  effected  according  to 
their  respective  aptitudes,  as  to  relative  value  in 
mental  training,  and  similar  subjects  must  con- 
tinue, indeed,  for  many  a  day  to  come ;    and   if 


LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE  1 29 

my  colleagues  of  the  so-called  humane  studies 
persist  in  holding  their  inherited,  not  personally 
achieved,  ground  in  such  a  Bourbon-like  fashion,  I 
fear  that  my  colleagues  of  the  natural  sciences  will 
for  a  long  time  be  justified  in  banding  together 
to  resist  ultraconservatism  by  radical  aggression. 
But  wrangling  is  at  no  time  necessary,  and  it  is  to 
be  hoped  that  the  outcome  of  every  contest  be- 
tween extreme  conservatism  and  irritated  radicalism 
will  be  true  progress.  And  if  reason  and  catho- 
licity prevail,  as  they  doubtless  will  in  the  long 
run,  the  questions  at  issue  will  be  answered  by  a 
sound  pedagogy,  which  must  be  based  upon  educa- 
tional history  in  its  broadest  sense  and  experi- 
mental psychology.  When  that  day  comes,  there 
will  be  no  "college  fetich"  to  give  offence  and,  let 
us  hope,  no  denouncers  of  it  to  give  still  greater 
offence  by  their  denunciations.  Yet  I  suspect 
that  in  that  blessed  time  Greek,  the  most  beautiful 
of  languages,  preserved  in  the  most  perfect  of 
literatures,  will  still  be  taught,  even  in  those  univer- 
sities in  which  for  good  and  sufficient  reasons  the 
chief  emphasis  is  laid  upon  science. 

A  third  consequence  of  the  adoption  of  a  catho- 
lic attitude  seems  to  be  more  important  still.  The 
scientist  will  gain  inspiration  and  concrete  help  in 


130  LITERATURE   AND   SCIENCE 

greater  abundance  from  the  man  of  letters  and  the 
artist,  and  the  man  of  letters  and  the  artist  will  in 
turn  gain  inspiration  and  help  from  the  scientist. 
Precisely  what  benefits  will  flow  to  the  scientist  I 
am  not  specially  competent  to  say ;  but  he  cannot 
fail  to  be  a  better  scientist  if  he  becomes  a  better 
man,  and  a  better  man  he  is  sure  to  be  if  he  lives 
in  charity  with  his  fellow-interpreters  of  the  uni- 
verse and  if  he  submits  his  emotional  nature  to 
the  charms  of  art  and  literature.  Some  of  the 
aberrations  of  literary  taste  displayed  by  Her- 
bert Spencer  have  recently  been  subjected  to 
comment,  and  capital  has  been  so  frequently 
made  of  Darwin's  confession  with  regard  to  the 
starving  of  his  aesthetic  faculties,  that  one  hesi- 
tates to  mention  it,  especially  if  one  belongs  to 
the  literary  class  that  has  used  it  as  a  text  for 
numerous  sermons.  Still,  with  no  intention  of 
preaching,  I  may  say  that,  whenever  a  full,  catho- 
lic understanding  is  arrived  at  between  the  vota- 
ries of  science  and  those  of  literature,  it  is  altogether 
likely  that  scientists  will  be  less  self-centred  than 
they  now  are,  more  alive  to  the  aesthetic  appeal 
made  by  the  world  whose  material  phenomena  it  is 
their  chief  concern  to  investigate,  more  interested 
in  human   life  with    its  mysterious  and  complex 


LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE  131 

forces,  and,  finally,  more  willing  to  admit  that  the 
phenomena  we  vaguely  denominate  spiritual  are 
not  only  worthy  of  the  fullest  scientific  in- 
vestigation, but  are  also  often  set  in  relief  and 
thus  made  amenable  to  study  by  the  subtle  in- 
sight and  the  plastic  genius  of  the  artist  and  the 
writer.  In  other  words,  the  day  will  surely  come 
when  creative  genius  in  art  and  letters  will  not 
be  merely  a  source  of  innocuous  and  unimpor- 
tant pleasure  to  some  scientists,  or  an  object  of 
study  with  a  particular  branch  of  them,  to  wit, 
the  alienists.  Yet,  as  I  speak,  I  realize  that  I 
am  doing  the  scientific  mind  an  injustice  in  im- 
plying that  it  does  not  often  take  seriously  the 
serious  art  of  the  world.  John  Stuart  Mill  was 
not  a  born  scientist,  but  his  was  preeminently  a 
scientific  mind,  and  it  was  more  receptive  of  the 
early  poetry  of  Robert  Browning  than  were  the 
minds  of  nine  out  of  ten  professed  critics  in 
the  England  of  the  thirties  and  the  forties. 

With  regard  to  the  inspiration  and  concrete  help 
to  be  gained  by  men  of  letters  from  the  adoption 
of  a  catholic  attitude  toward  scientific  interpreters 
of  the  universe,  I  can  perhaps  speak  a  little  more 
definitely.  Creative  literature,  certainly  in  its  ob- 
jective forms,  such    as   the  epic,   the   drama,   the 


132  LITERATURE   AND  SCIENCE 

novel,  rests  primarily  upon  observation  of  human 
and,  to  a  less  extent,  of  external  nature.  Even  in 
its  subjective  forms,  such  as  the  lyric  poem,  litera- 
ture rests  upon  a  certain  amount  of  self-observa- 
tion or  introspection,  although  the  writer  may  be 
unconscious  of  the  fact  when  he  is  in  the  fervor  of 
actual  creation.  But  observation  is  one  of  the  two 
foundation  stones  upon  which  the  whole  structure 
of  science  has  been  reared.  The  other  foundation 
stone  of  science  is  experiment,  which  is  also  indis- 
pensable, not  merely  to  every  man  of  letters  who 
wishes  to  test  his  powers,  but  also  to  literature,  if 
it  is  to  be  a  thing  of  growth  and  adaptation  to 
human  needs.  That  the  experimental  tests  of 
the  scientist  are  vastly  different  from  those  of 
the  man  of  letters  is  a  statement  that  needs 
scarcely  to  be  made ;  but  it  is  equally  obvious 
that  the  results  of  every  writer's  observation 
are  continually  being  tested  both  by  himself  and 
by  his  critics  and  readers.  Constant  recognition 
of  the  latter  fact  and  sympathy  with  the  mental 
attitude  of  cautious  pursuit  of  accuracy  character- 
istic of  the  scientist  cannot  but  be  beneficial  to  the 
writer  by  increasing  his  sense  of  responsibility  and 
by  reminding  him  of  the  impermanence,  not  to  say 
the  impertinence,  of  slipshod  work. 


LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE  1 33 

But  the  self-consciousness  which  is  necessary 
to  the  scientific  investigator,  even  if  it  vitiates 
his  work  to  a  degree  determinable  by  the  "  per- 
sonal equation,"  is  often  more  or  less  of  a  draw- 
back to  the  writer;  hence  experiment  is  of  far 
less  significance  to  him  than  observation.  Even 
the  wildest  romancer  is  more  dependent  upon 
observation  of  the  facts  of  life  than  would  ap- 
pear at  first  thought;  and  the  great  creative 
writer,  whether  in  prose  or  in  verse,  is  abso- 
lutely dependent  upon  it.  The  more  accurate 
his  observation,  and  in  many  cases  the  more 
minute,  the  more  authentic  his  genius.  Balzac 
described  the  houses  of  Saumur  as  minutely 
almost  as  a  botanist  describes  a  plant. 
Thackeray,  writing  in  his  last  years  a  ro- 
mance of  England  at  the  end  of  the  eight- 
eenth century,  left  behind  him  topographical 
and  biographical  notes  so  numerous  and  so 
careful  that  it  is  easy  to  judge  in  the  main 
the  course  the  unfinished  story  of  "Denis 
Duval "  would  have  followed.  Shakspere  has 
left  us  no  manuscript  notes  of  the  observations 
which  enabled  him  to  develop  an  Italian  story 
or  an  old  chronicle  play  or  a  tragedy  of  blood 
into    a    consummate    dramatic    masterpiece ;    but 


134  LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE 

if  he  did  not  take  his  notes  on  paper  or  on  a 
tablet  of  the  kind  he  speaks  of  in  his  "  Sonnets," 
he  took  them  in  his  capacious  and  retentive 
mind.  In  literature,  however,  observation  deals 
not  alone  with  the  external  and  the  material ; 
it  is  concerned  with  thoughts  as  well  as  with 
actions,  with  ideas  as  well  as  with  facts.  Here 
is  where  literary  observation  differs  from  most 
varieties  of  scientific  observation,  and  here  is 
precisely  where,  in  my  judgment,  the  man  of 
letters  has  most  to  learn  from  his  fellow-inter- 
preter of  the  universe.  Having  to  observe  and 
explain  the  actions  of  men,  the  creative  writer 
is  ever  laboring  under  the  temptation  to  square 
the  facts  of  life  with  theories  of  life  and  the 
universe  which  he  has  accepted  upon  hear- 
say or  through  inherited  prejudices.  He  is 
rarely  as  honest  and  thorough  in  his  observa- 
tion or  study  of  ideas  as  he  is  in  his  observa- 
tion of  individuals  and  types.  For  example, 
Maupassant  could  sketch  a  Norman  peasant  to 
the  life,  but  he  gave  little  evidence  of  having 
studied  with  equal  fidelity  the  social  system 
that  has  made  that  rural  brute  a  possibility. 
In  other  words,  no  writer,  not  even  a  Shak- 
spere  or  a  Balzac,  appears  to  me  comparable  with 


LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE  135 

a  scientist  in  the  impartiality  and  thoroughness 
of  his  observation.  Should  he  aim  to  be  or 
should  we  wish  him  to  be  ?  Is  it  not  enough 
that  his  observation  be  sufficiently  accurate  to 
give  us  the  pleasures  that  accompany  aesthetic 
illusion  ?  I  am  quite  sure  that  many  persons 
would  answer  these  questions  in  the  affirmative, 
but  I  cannot.  For  me  the  great  writer  must 
be  the  great  interpreter  of  life,  and  to  be  such 
he  must  see  it  steadily  and  see  it  whole,  as 
Matthew  Arnold  said  Sophocles  did.  I  hold 
implicitly  and  unwaveringly  to  Keats's  apothegm, 
"  Beauty  is  Truth,  Truth  Beauty,"  and  I  perceive 
nothing  but  aesthetic  loss  when  a  fragment  of 
necessary  truth  escapes  the  artist's  hand.  Un- 
necessary truth  is,  to  be  sure,  a  phrase  that 
means  more  to  an  artist  than  to  a  scientist  or 
to  an  ultra-realistic  novelist.  We  accept  readily 
a  Hamlet  stout  and  short  of  breath,  but  we  should 
reject  a  Hamlet  with  a  nose  as  large  as  Cyrano's. 
In  our  rejection,  however,  we  should  be  really 
relying  upon  accurate  and  more  or  less  scientific 
observation,  which  teaches  us  that  to  centre 
attention  upon  a  physical  characteristic  is  to 
obscure  to  some  extent  those  spiritual  and  men- 
tal characteristics  which  are  the  mainsprings   of 


136  LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE 

dramatic  action.  It  may  be  safely  affirmed,  never- 
theless, that  in  the  realm  of  ideas  the  phrase 
"  unnecessary  truth "  has  far  less  meaning  to 
the  writer  than  it  has  in  the  realm  of  facts. 
His  theories  of  life,  his  ideas  about  man  and 
his  environment,  should  be  thought  out  to  the 
last  point  of  analysis,  and  should  be  squared 
with  every  observation  it  has  been  within  his 
power  to  make.  When  he  accepts  a  theory  of 
politics,  a  system  of  religion,  a  social  order, 
without  accurate  observation  and  investigation, 
he  does  so  at  his  peril.  He  may  be  excused 
for  not  being  ahead  of  his  generation,  but  unless 
he  possesses  compensating  merits,  he  runs  the 
risk  of  being  valued  solely  as  an  exponent  of 
his  epoch ;  in  other  words,  as  possessing  historical 
importance  merely.  Even  Shakspere  has  suf- 
fered somewhat  from  the  fact  that  the  spirit  of 
Tudor  absolutism  is  more  in  evidence  in  his 
plays  than  that  of  modern  democracy.  Thack- 
eray suffers  as  compared  with  Dickens  because, 
whether  the  latter  could  draw  a  conventional 
gentleman  or  not,  the  former,  with  all  his  ability 
to  detect  the  follies  of  individuals,  undoubtedly 
regarded  the  social  set  in  which  he  lived  and 
moved  rather  with  the  partiality  of  an  easy-going 


LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE  1 37 

clubman  than  with  the  impartiality  of  the  philo- 
sophical observer  of  life  or  with  the  amused 
tolerance  of  the  cosmopolitan  democrat.  Shak- 
spere  and  Thackeray,  however,  possessed  and 
exercised  such  wonderful  powers  of  observation 
in  so  many  fields  both  of  facts  and  of  ideas 
that  their  limitations  are  not  merely  pardoned, 
but  almost  overlooked.  Inconsistently  enough, 
we  do  not  similarly  overlook  the  limitations  of 
Milton  and  Byron  ;  but  the  main  point  is  that 
all  these  writers  would  have  been  greater  still 
if  their  observation  had  been  still  more  extended 
in  the  realm  of  ideas.  This  is  but  to  say  that 
the  absolute  unwillingness  of  the  scientist  to 
leave  a  single  phenomenon  uninvestigated  ought 
to  be  true  of  the  writer,  within  the  limits  set 
by  our  fallible  nature.  The  boundaries  between 
fact  and  fancy  should  not  be  passed  by  writer 
or  by  reader  without  a  clear  recognition  of 
the  step  taken.  When  that  step  has  been 
taken  in  an  unambiguous  manner,  the  writer 
may  carry  us  whithersoever  his  imagination 
leads,  provided  only  that  he  obey  the  laws  of 
artistic  consistency.  Within  the  realm  of  the 
actual  his  duty  to  us  is  as  clear  and  ineluctable 
as   that   of    the    scientist  —  he    must   observe    as 


138  LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE 

thoroughly  and  impartially  as  is  possible,  in 
order  that  he  may  the  more  completely  inter- 
pret to  us  the  universe  as  he  sees  it.  Absolute 
honesty  and  absolute  thoroughness  of  observa- 
tion are  the  watchwords  of  the  writer  just  as 
truly  as  they  are  those  of  the  scientist ;  or,  to 
vary  the  figure,  both  march  under  the  same 
banner,  ■ — ■  a  tricolor,  the  stripes  of  which  coincide 
with  that  trinity  of  truth,  beauty,  and  goodness 
about  which  poets  have  sung  and  philosophers 
expounded  since  the  dawn  of  civilization. 

Time  is  wanting  for  a  careful  consideration  of 
a  point  which  will  very  probably  occur  here  to 
many, — to  wit,  the  bearing  of  these  remarks  upon 
certain  forms  of  literature  in  which  observation 
scarcely  seems  to  play  the  important  part  it  does 
in  such  works  as  the  plays  of  Sophocles  and  the 
novels  of  Balzac.  The  dreamer,  the  symbolist, 
the  mystic,  the  idealist  —  what  have  these  in 
common  with  the  chemist  and  his  blowpipe  ? 
This  much  at  least,  as  I  have  already  said,  —  they 
must  obey  the  laws  of  artistic  consistency,  or,  to 
put  it  otherwise,  they  must  apply  to  the  universe  of 
their  fancy  or  imagination  the  observation  that  can 
alone  make  it  coherent  and  harmonious.  If  they 
do  not  do  this,  and  if  they  do  not  make  clear  the 


LITERATURE   AND   SCIENCE  139 

relations  borne  by  their  creations  to  the  visible, 
concrete  universe  in  which  they  as  writers  and  we 
as  readers  move  and  have  our  being,  they  cannot 
be  great  writers,  simply  because  they  cannot  be 
sane  and  honest  writers.  We  should  be  uncatholic 
if  we  did  not  give  the  fullest  scope  to  dreamers 
and  idealists,  we  should  hamper  art  without  bene- 
fiting science ;  but  we  should  be  false  to  our 
highest  duty,  that  of  interpreting  the  universe,  if, 
without  protest,  we  allowed  the  dreamer  to  call 
his  dreams  realities,  or  the  idealist  to  lure  us  into 
believing  that  he  has  actually  discovered  a  world 
different  from  that  in  which  our  lots  are  cast.  To 
talk  of  higher  realities  is  to  talk  of  nonsense.  To 
deny  the  existence  of  determinable  realities  is 
logical,  although  convincing  to  but  few ;  to  dis- 
cover transcendent  realities  in  the  shape  of  ideals 
and  symbols,  or  of  concrete  phenomena  that  elude 
all  observation  save  that  of  the  elect,  is  in  the  last 
analysis  immoral.  When  we  pass  the  boundaries 
of  the  known  and  the  knowable,  we  shall,  if  we 
be  honest,  furl  our  tricolor  and  unfurl  another 
banner,  whether  it  be  a  streamer  of  fancy  or  a 
flag  bearing  on  its  field  the  anchor  of  hope. 

In  illustration    of    these    remarks,    let   me    cite 
three  creations  of    English  writers,   all  of  which 


140  LITERATURE   AND   SCIENCE 

are  ideal,  all  wonderfully  poetic,  but  of  which 
two  seem  thoroughly  sound,  the  third  partly  un- 
sound. The  first  is  "The  Tempest"  of  Shak- 
spere,  the  second,  the  "  Comus  "  of  Milton,  the 
third,  the  "  Epipsychidion  "  of  Shelley.  "  The 
Tempest  "  is  the  most  exquisite,  just  as  "Comus" 
is  probably  the  purest  of  idealistic  compositions 
in  the  English  tongue  ;  both  are  the  products 
of  noble  and  wholesome  imaginations  moving  in 
enchanted  and  enchanting  regions  never  disturbed 
by  "  the  tread  of  hateful  steps  "  or  even  "  of  some 
chaste  footing  "  ;  but  both  are  wonderfully  true  to 
the  laws  of  truth,  beauty,  and  goodness  as  we  see 
them  work  in  this  unenchanted  and  often  unen- 
chanting  world  of  ours.  "  The  Tempest  "  is  as 
fundamentally  honest  as  "  Hamlet."  But  the 
"  Epipsychidion  "  of  Shelley,  which  in  turn  trans- 
ports us  to  an  ideal  spot,  although,  if  studied  only 
in  the  light  of  its  marvellous  lyrical  intensity  and 
pictorial  power,  it  must  always  rank  among 
poetic  masterpieces,  is  not  an  essentially  honest 
and  moral  work  because  it  had  its  source  in  a 
false  set  of  human  relations  and  in  mistaken  ideals 
of  love.  Shelley  in  writing  the  poem  did  an 
injustice  to  his  faithful  wife,  to  the  Italian  girl 
who  inspired  it,  to  himself,  and  to  humanity.     It 


LITERATURE   AND   SCIENCE  141 

is  idle  to  suppose  that  the  "  Epipsychidion  "  can 
be  accepted  as  a  poem  divorced  from  its  setting  in 
the  facts  of  Shelley's  life.  The  spirit  in  which  a 
composition  is  written  must  permeate  it  and  be 
perceptible  to  any  sensitive  reader.  The  "  Epipsy- 
chidion "  has  never  been  truly  popular ;  should 
it  ever  become  so,  it  would  be  a  dire  day,  I  think, 
to  the  English  race.  On  the  other  hand,  the  day 
when  "The  Tempest"  and  "  Comus "  ceased  to 
delight  would  be  equally  dire. 

What  has  just  been  said  of  the  advantages  to  be 
derived  by  creative  writers  from  familiarity  with 
the  aims  and  methods  of  scientists  applies  with 
even  greater  force  to  critics  and  students  of  litera- 
ture. Observation,  combined  with  experiment,  is 
the  foundation  stone  of  all  the  studies  known  as 
humane.  As  in  the  natural  sciences,  coordination 
of  the  results  of  study  and  speculation  upon  them 
are  essential  to  progress ;  but  that  we  may  have 
results  to  work  upon,  observation  of  phenomena 
must  precede.  "  Observe  the  facts  in  your  chosen 
sphere  of  investigation  "  should  be  the  first  piece 
of  advice  given  to  the  student  of  literature  as  well 
as  to  the  student  of  chemistry,  it  being  remem- 
bered, however,  that  a  piece  of  literature,  as  a 
product   of    the    human   spirit,    partakes   of    the 


142  LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE 

elusiveness  of  that  spirit  and  hence  cannot  be 
subjected  to  such  complete  analysis  as  is  possible 
in  the  case  of  a  chemical  product.  But  unless  the 
comparatively  tangible  characteristics  of  a  literary 
product  are  accurately  observed  and  noted  down, 
there  is  no  study  of  it  in  any  true  sense  of  the 
term,  for  it  is  only  on  such  observation,  combined 
with  coordination  and  speculation,  that  any  report 
capable  of  carrying  conviction  to  others  can  be 
made  on  the  product.  This  is  a  hard  saying  to 
many  persons  who  fancy  that  expatiating  upon 
the  beauty  of  a  poem  is  studying  that  poem.  It 
is  not.  It  partakes  much  more  of  worship  than 
of  investigation  or  study.  It  may  be  better  than 
study,  but  it  is  not  study,  and  its  results  may  be 
communicated,  —  enthusiasm  is  generally  conta- 
gious,—  but  they  cannot  be  taught,  that  is,  made 
objects  of  knowledge  and  of  reasoned  belief. 

If  this  be  so,  it  follows  that  the  opposition 
between  scientific  and  literary  studies  in  our  in- 
stitutions of  learning  should  tend  to  disappear  as 
the  true  relations  between  science  and  literature 
are  better  apprehended.  The  student  of  litera- 
ture is  in  his  way  a  scientific  observer,  and  his 
prime  object  as  student  is  the  pursuit  of  truth. 
As  a  lover  of  the  beautiful  and  the  good,  —  and, 


LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE  143 

as  we  have  seen,  he  must  be  lover  and  student  at 
the  same  time,  —  he  uses  literature  in  a  different 
way, — he  enjoys  it,  he  derives  noble  ideals  from 
it,  he  becomes  through  contact  with  it  a  better 
man.  But  he  can  succeed  in  being  a  true  student 
and  a  true  lover  at  one  and  the  same  time  only  on 
the  terms  by  which  it  is  possible  for  the  scientist 
to  be  a  true  student  and  a  true  lover  of  the  prov- 
ince of  the  universe  with  which  he  deals.  Both 
must  draw  the  proper  distinction  between  what 
they  know  and  what  they  feel.  The  temptation 
of  the  literary  student  to  confound  these  is  the 
greater,  but  he  must  manfully  resist  it.  It  is 
because  so  many  critics  and  historians  and  stu- 
dents of  literature  fail  to  do  this,  that  so  much 
confusion  and  contradiction  prevails  in  literary 
studies  —  to  the  amusement  or  the  disgust  of  the 
scientist.  It  is  quite  possible,  however,  to  study 
the  facts  of  literature  scientifically  while  enjoying 
aesthetically  its  beauties,  and  not  to  confound  the 
two  processes.  Just  so,  the  botanist  can  admire 
and  enjoy  the  beauty  of  the  flower  he  dissects. 
But  neither  the  student  of  literature  nor  the  stu- 
dent of  botany  will  derive  the  full  disciplinary 
value  from  his  studies  unless  he  bases  them  firmly 
upon   systematic   observation.      This  means   that 


144  LITERATURE   AND   SCIENCE 

literary  studies  rest  ultimately  on  the  same  basis  as 
that  sublime  science,  astronomy.  We  hitch  our 
wagons  to  books  instead  of  to  stars ;  but,  after  all, 
books  are  the  products  of  man's  creative  soul,  and 
the  soul  of  a  man  like  Milton,  as  Wordsworth  long 
since  told  us,  is  like  a  star.  In  the  final  analysis 
a  drop  of  water  is  as  wonderful  as  a  star,  and  a 
book  is  as  wonderful  as  either  ;  and  although  our 
instruments  of  observation,  when  we  play  our  parts 
as  students  of  literature,  are  not  so  accurate  as  the 
microscope  and  the  telescope,  neither  our  fallible 
instruments  nor  the  objects  of  our  study  will  be 
underrated  by  the  catholic  mind. 

But  we  come  around  so  often  to  that  one  word 
"  catholic  "  and  the  idea  which  underlies  it,  that  it 
seems  both  needless  and  impertinent  to  continue 
this  line  of  argument  any  further.  He  who  once 
grasps  the  idea  of  catholicity  does  not  need  argu- 
ments to  convince  him  of  the  futility  of  wrangling, 
of  the  narrow-mindedness  implicit  in  the  assump- 
tion that  there  can  be  real  opposition  between  two 
great  groups  of  mental  pursuits.  I  will  reason, 
therefore,  no  longer,  and  will  conclude  with  an 
appeal  to  all  who  hear  me  to  set  their  faces  against 
every  endeavor  to  advance  any  science  at  the 
expense  of  any  art,  or  any  art  at  the  expense  of 


LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE  1 45 

any  science.  Why  cannot  you,  my  biological 
friend,  gather  your  students  around  you  in  your 
laboratory,  and  you,  my  colleague  in  Greek  lit- 
erature, read  with  your  class  the  adventures  of 
Ulysses  among  the  blameless  Phaeacians,  without 
having  the  unanswerable  question  raised,  Which 
of  you  is  doing  the  more  to  advance  the  interests 
of  the  race  ?  That  is  a  silly  question  to  ask.  A 
proper  question  would  be,  When  will  sentimen- 
talists cease  to  hamper  the  biologist  in  his  ex- 
periments, and  when  will  the  state  or  generous 
individuals  give  him  every  facility  he  needs  in 
the  prosecution  of  his  noble  services  to  humanity  ? 
Another  proper  question  would  be,  When  will 
Philistines  cease  to  make  mere  utilitarianism  the 
sole  standard  of  life  ?  in  other  words,  When  will 
they  cease  to  be  Philistines,  and  therefore  to  be 
obnoxious  ?  To  these  questions,  probably  but  one 
answer  can  be  given  —  Never !  But  they  are  not 
profitless  questions,  because  involved  in  each  there 
is  an  ideal  to  be  striven  for.  Intellectual  freedom 
and  generosity  and  sympathy  are  attainable  by  all, 
and  are  beneficial  to  the  entire  race ;  but  any 
ungenerous  rivalry  between  studies  is  founded  in 
selfishness,  and  is  therefore  base  and  to  be  es- 
chewed.    The  picture  of    Nausicaa  receiving  the 


146        LITERATURE  AND  SCIENCE 

shipwrecked  Ulysses  is  as  priceless  a  possession 
of  the  human  race  as  any  discovery  of  science  or 
any  achievement  of  statesman  or  soldier.1  It  is 
an  integral  part  of  civilization,  for  if  there  had 
been  no  Greek  race  capable  of  producing  in  its 
dawn  that  Father  of  Poets  upon  whose  inner  eye 
that  ineffably  lovely  picture  stamped  itself,  there 
is  no  reason  to  believe  that  modern  science  would 
be  what  it  is,  or  that  the  annals  of  Western  Europe 
would  have  been  rendered  so  illustrious  by  soldiers 
and  by  statesmen.  And  if,  furthermore,  the  day 
should  ever  come  when  the  world  would  consent 
to  drop  from  the  category  of  desirable  acquisitions 
the  knowledge  of  that  Greek  tongue  in  which 
centuries  ago  that  exquisite  picture  was  unfolded 
before  the  minds  of  barbarian  chieftains  by  wan- 
dering bards,  the  heirs  of  Homer's  art,  then  the 
scientist  would  do  well  to  break  his  instruments 
and  the  statesman  to  close  his  books  and  his 
portfolio ;  for  the  reign  of  chaos  described  by  the 
poet  would  have  begun,  and  there  would  be  noth- 
ing left  for  any  lover  of  his  kind  but  to  exclaim, 

"  Thy  hand,  great  Anarch !  lets  the  curtain  fall, 
And  universal  darkness  buries  all." 

1  See  the  closing  pages  of  this  volume.  The  Sixth  Book  of  the 
"Odyssey"  is  a  poetic  creation,  the  beauty  of  which  might  well 
turn  a  critic   into  a  harper  on  one  string. 


VI 

TEACHING   LITERATURE 


[Delivered  as  one  of  a  series  of  public  lectures  during  the 
Summer  Session  of  Columbia  University,  July,  1902.  Published 
in  The  Sewanee  Review  for  October,  1904.] 


VI 

TEACHING   LITERATURE 

It  need  scarcely  be  said  that  a  fairly  large 
literature,  in  a  special  sense  of  the  term,  has  of 
late  grown  up  around  the  question  how  literature 
in  general  should  be  taught.  Whole  books  have 
been  devoted  to  it,  and  the  number  of  articles 
concerning  it  is  rather  formidable.  I  myself  have 
written  three  such  papers ;  but  it  is  a  subject  that 
admits  of  much  discussion,  and  I  suppose  that  I 
am  not  exceptional  in  finding  myself  dissatisfied, 
in  the  light  of  accumulating  experience,  with 
much  of  my  past  theorizing  and  writing.  For 
this  reason,  if  for  no  other,  I  should  like  to 
examine  the  matter  afresh. 

To  do  this,  we  must  reason  from  the  bottom  up ; 
and  we  shall  require  working  definitions  of  our 
two  terms,  "  literature  "  and  "  teaching."  No  one 
has  yet  succeeded  in  defining  "  literature,"  but 
it  is  generally  understood  that,  when  used  in  con- 
nection with  schools  and  colleges,  to  a  less  extent 

149 


150  TEACHING   LITERATURE 

with  universities  and  the  reading  public,  the  scope  of 
the  term  "literature"  is  narrowed  by  the  exclusion 
of  books  that  have  little  or  no  aesthetic  value.  In 
other  words,  only  the  books  which  through  their 
subject-matter  or  their  style  or  through  both  please 
us  to  a  certain  extent  —  that  is,  affect  our  emo- 
tions in  a  more  or  less  agreeable  way  —  are 
counted  as  constituting  "  literature  "  in  our  sense 
of  the  term.  These  agreeable  books  are  mainly 
differentiated  through  the  fact  that  they  are  full 
of  that  indefinable  something  which  we  call  "  im- 
agination "  —  that  is  to  say,  they  fall  chiefly  under 
the  categories  of  poetry,  drama,  and  fiction.  It  is 
furthermore  evident,  not  merely  that  masses  of 
books,  useful  for  various  purposes,  yet  not  capable 
of  giving  much  or  any  aesthetic  pleasure,  are  ex- 
cluded from  literature,  but  that  perhaps  as  many 
more  are  shut  out  because,  comparatively  speaking, 
they  have  ceased  to  please  and  are  no  longer  litera- 
ture for  us.  This  is  equivalent  to  saying  that  time 
does  part  of  our  winnowing  for  us.  The  teaching 
of  literature  means  really  the  teaching,  not  of  once 
popular,  but  of  classic  books,  and,  in  a  few  cases, 
of  such  contemporary  books  as  seem  to  possess 
qualities  likely  to  make  them  classic. 

But    what    does    the   term    "  teaching "    mean 


TEACHING   LITERATURE  151 

when  applied  to  a  subject  that  involves  our  emo- 
tional natures  ?  Here  is  really  the  crucial  point  of 
our  problem.  Do  we  understand  that,  for  us,  to 
teach  shall  mean  to  inculcate,  or  that  it  shall  mean 
to  impart  pleasure,  or  that  it  shall  mean  to  instruct, 
or  that  it  shall  mean  all  three  ?  If  we  emphasize 
the  idea  of  inculcation,  we  must  obviously  intend 
to  give  ourselves  up  chiefly  to  what  I  have  else- 
where termed  teaching  the  spirit  of  literature  —  to 
inculcating  the  higher  and  the  lower  virtues  of 
humanity  that  in  various  ways  are  illustrated  in 
the  classical  writings  of  our  own  literature  and  of 
foreign  literatures.  For  example,  we  shall  use 
Lowell's  odes  in  order  to  inculcate  the  virtue  of 
patriotism. 

If  we  emphasize  the  idea  of  imparting  delight, 
we  must  intend  to  give  ourselves  up  to  the  task  of 
training  the  aesthetic  faculties  of  our  pupils  so  that 
they  may  more  fully  appreciate  the  beauties  of 
literature  and  learn  more  and  more  to  take  pleas- 
ure in  the  choicest  books.  For  example,  we  shall 
use  Lowell's  odes  in  order  to  impart  and  develop 
the  delight  the  trained  ear  receives  from  choice 
diction  and  harmonious  rhythm.  For  many  of 
us,  to  be  sure,  it  is  impossible  to  avoid  com- 
bining   inculcation    of    the    humane   virtues    with 


152  TEACHING  LITERATURE 

this  imparting  of  aesthetic  delight ;  but  it  is  pos- 
sible greatly  to  emphasize  the  latter  function  of 
the  teacher,  since  the  giving  of  aesthetic  pleasure 
is  held  by  not  a  few  critics  to  be  the  chief  if  not 
the  sole  reason  for  the  existence  of  literature. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  emphasize  the  idea  of 
instruction,  we  must  obviously  intend  to  give  our- 
selves up,  in  the  main,  to  teaching  the  facts  of 
literature  —  that  is,  to  dwelling  upon  literary 
history  and  biography,  to  laying  stress  on  names 
and  dates  and  periods,  to  tracing  literary  influ- 
ences, to  studying  the  evolution  of  a  special  form 
of  composition ;  for  example,  the  drama.  In  brief, 
if  we  use  literature  as  matter  for  inculcation,  we 
teachers  of  it  must  take  our  stand,  at  least  in  part, 
with  the  preachers,  the  moralists ;  and  if  as  a 
means  of  imparting  delight,  with  the  apostles  of 
aesthetic  culture ;  if,  on  the  contrary,  we  use 
literature  as  matter  for  instruction,  we  must  take 
our  place  with  our  friends  who  endeavor  to  convey 
a  knowledge  of  the  facts  of  language,  of  history, 
of  economics,  of  the  natural  sciences. 

But  I  doubt  whether  there  are  many  teachers  of 
literature  who  do  not  try  to  combine  the  methods 
involved  in  the  phrases,  to  impart  delight,  to  incul- 
cate, and  to  instruct.     They  use  Lowell's  odes  to 


TEACHING   LITERATURE  I  53 

inculcate  the  virtue  of  patriotism,  and  to  impart 
and  develop  aesthetic  pleasure ;  but  they  also  give 
instruction  with  regard  to  those  facts  of  Lowell's 
life  and  of  American  history  which  explain  how  and 
why  he  came  to  write  his  odes,  and  to  fill  them 
with  the  patriotic  spirit.  Yet  this  does  not  get  us  so 
far  away  from  our  crucial  point  as  we  may  imagine. 
The  question  of  the  proportions  of  inculcation  and 
aesthetic  training  to  be  blended  with  one  another 
and  with  instruction  still  remains  to  perplex  us ; 
and  we  are  still  confronted  with  the  more  diffi- 
cult and  certainly  the  more  practical  question  of 
how  we  shall  test  the  value  of  the  instruction  we 
convey.  If  we  are  to  have  our  courses  recog- 
nized as  integral  parts  of  the  school  or  college 
curriculum,  we  must  either  hold  our  examina- 
tions and  make  our  reports,  as  our  friends  —  I 
will  not  call  them  rivals  —  do,  or  we  must  adopt 
other  methods  of  advancing  our  students  and  must 
satisfy  our  fellow-teachers  that  we  are  not  merely 
giving  what  are  technically  known  in  college  slang 
as  "  snap  courses." 

I  suppose  my  own  experience  in  this  matter 
has  been  that  of  many  others.  I  have  detected 
among  my  friends  engaged  in  other  forms  of 
instruction    a    tendency    to    question    the    strict- 


154  TEACHING   LITERATURE 

ness,  the  mental  discipline,  the  definite,  tangible 
qualities  of  the  work  done  in  school  and  college 
classes  devoted  to  the  study  of  literature.  Cer- 
tainly this  is  the  case  with  respect  to  English  and 
other  modern  literatures ;  the  literatures  of  Greece 
and  Rome,  having  so  long  been  used  as  material 
for  philological  studies,  have  been  less  questioned 
on  the  score  of  the  strictness  of  the  mental  disci- 
pline derived  from  instruction  in  them,  but  have 
not  escaped  censure  on  the  score  of  general  utility. 
I  do  not  believe  that  the  doubts  of  these  critical 
teachers  are  unnatural,  or  that  they  will  be 
removed  unless  we  succeed  in  doing  one  of  two 
things.  We  must  either  impart  such  rigidity  to 
our  tests  of  the  amount  and  quality  of  our  in- 
struction as  shall  make  it  obvious  that  our 
classes  are  as  difficult  to  pass  as  those  of  any 
teacher  of  another  branch  of  study;  or,  by  a 
clear  analysis  of  the  theory  of  the  teaching  and 
study  of  literature,  we  must  convince  all  other 
educators,  and  perhaps  the  public  as  well,  that, 
while  literature  is  as  important  a  study  as  any 
other  and  must  be  included  in  any  good  school, 
college,  or  university  curriculum,  the  methods  of 
teaching  it  are  of  necessity  fundamentally  differ- 
ent from   those   employed   in   other   studies   and 


TEACHING   LITERATURE  155 

warrant  a  wide  departure  from  the  normal  tests 
of  instruction. 

Has  any  one  made  such  an  analysis  of  the 
theory  of  the  teaching  of  literature  as  clearly  sets 
that  study  apart  from  all  others  ?  If  any  one 
has,  I  have  not  seen  it.  On  the  other  hand,  has 
any  one  succeeded  in  imparting  such  rigidity  to  the 
methods  of  teaching  literature  and  of  testing  the 
instruction  conveyed  as  to  make  it  plain  that  lit- 
erature is  as  difficult  and  important  a  study  as  any 
other  ?  I  have  no  doubt  that  many  persons  have 
done  this,  at  least  so  far  as  concerns  the  matter  of 
difficulty.  I  have  done  it  myself,  and  I  can  engage 
to  "pitch"  anybody  else,  or  to  get  "pitched"  my- 
self, in  an  indefinite  series  of  examinations.  But, 
while  we  are  imparting  rigidity  to  our  instruc- 
tion, are  we  not  in  constant  danger  of  forgetting 
our  work  of  inculcation  and  of  aesthetic  training  ? 
Are  we  not  further  haunted  by  the  thought  that 
an  extremely  large  proportion  of  the  facts  about 
literature  that  we  make  our  pupils  learn  must  be 
speedily  forgotten  by  them,  and  can  in  few  cases 
do  them  any  direct  good  ? 

I  confess  I  have  been  haunted  by  this  thought 
for  fifteen  years.  Ever  since  I  had  certain  an- 
swers given  me,  which  I  am  fond  of   repeating, 


I56  TEACHING   LITERATURE 

I  have  doubted  the  great  value  of  instruction, 
not  merely  in  the  facts  of  literary  history  and 
biography,  but  in  minute  verbal  exegesis.  Ever 
since  a  student,  remembering  that  cynosure  is 
derived  from  the  Greek  for  dog's  tail,  com- 
mented  on   the   lines   of   "  L'Allegro," 

"  Where  perhaps  some  beauty  lies, 
The  cynosure  of  neighboring  eyes," 

to  the  effect  that  they  had  something  to  do  with  a 
dog,  I  have  been  sceptical  of  the  utility  of  much 
of  the  teaching  that  we  feel  obliged  to  examine 
upon.  I  have  also  been  sceptical  of  many  of  the 
other  tests  of  memory  to  which  unfortunate  chil- 
dren have  been  and  are  subjected  —  for  example, 
of  the  tests  of  memory  required  of  them  in  geog- 
raphy and  grammar ;  but  in  geography  and  gram- 
mar the  use  of  maps  and  examples  helps  the 
memory,  whereas  in  literature  there  is  little  support 
given  to  the  memory  save  by  a  comparatively  few 
specimens  of  poetry  and  prose  read  in  class  and 
in  private.  Surely  our  brethren  who  teach  the 
sciences  have  in  their  laboratories,  in  their  ex- 
periments, a  great  advantage  over  us  who  can 
seldom  bring  our  students  into  sufficient  contact 
with  the  body  of  that  literature  about  the  history 


TEACHING   LITERATURE  157 

and  minute  details  of  which  we  propose  to  ex- 
amine them  more  or  less  strictly. 

But  some  one  may  say,  "  You  are  behind  the 
times.  Literature  used  to  be  taught  from 
manuals  and  other  dry-as-dust  compilations ; 
now  we  use  carefully  selected  and  edited  texts, 
we  have  school  libraries,  we  make  our  pupils  do 
a  considerable  amount  of  outside  reading.  We 
require  them  to  study  up  special  topics  and 
write  essays  upon  them  —  in  other  words,  we  use 
'  laboratory  methods.'  " 

So  be  it ;  yet  I  fancy  that  I  have  had  a  fair  op- 
portunity of  watching  the  development  of  English 
instruction  in  this  country.  I  can  go  back  to  the 
day  when  a  little  English  grammar  and  a  weekly 
composition  or  the  recitation  of  a  poem  consti- 
tuted the  English  work  of  many  a  well-regulated 
school.  I  can  recollect  when  specific  English 
chairs  were  first  established  in  large  universities. 
I  well  remember  the  leading  features  of  English 
instruction  during  the  decade  from  1880  to  1890. 
It  was  almost  entirely  linguistic.  Young  doc- 
tors from  German  universities  were  returning  in 
large  numbers,  the  Johns  Hopkins  University  was 
initiating  German  methods,  and  as  a  result  it  was 
difficult  anywhere  in  the  United  States  to  secure 


158  TEACHING   LITERATURE 

specifically  literary  instruction.  The  text-books 
used  in  school  and  college  alike  were  filled  with 
notes  tracing  the  history  of  words,  and  were 
singularly  lacking,  not  merely  in  anything  that 
would  stimulate  a  pupil's  love  of  literature,  but 
often  in  anything  that  would  give  him  an  adequate 
idea  of  the  place  in  literary  history  held  by  the 
author  and  book  he  was  studying. 

Late  in  the  eighties  and  early  in  the  nineties 
came  the  inevitable  reaction  —  a  small  crusade 
against  the  neglect  of  literature  in  the  universities 
and  schools.  The  result  was  soon  apparent. 
Philologians  began  to  desire  to  prove  themselves 
to  be  experts  in  literature  as  well,  and  issued  some 
queer  text-books.  Specific  chairs  of  literature  were 
established,  and  soon  some  colleges  and  universities 
gave  perhaps  disproportionate  attention  to  the 
new  subject.  The  change  was  even  more  marked 
in  the  schools.  Classes  in  English  literature 
were  added  to  the  programme  of  studies,  and  a 
series  of  English  classics  was  selected  on  which 
examinations  for  entrance  into  college  were  based. 
Latter-day  school-teachers  know  the  woes  and  the 
blessings  attendant  upon  teaching  those  English 
classics  better  than  I  do,  since,  when  I  taught  in 
schools,  English  literature  was  scarcely  recognized 


TEACHING   LITERATURE  I  59 

as  a  fit  subject  of  instruction — at  least  in  the 
South. 

But  has  this  movement  of  the  past  ten  years 
been  as  much  of  an  advance  as  some  of  us  who 
tried  to  help  it  on  fondly  imagined  it  would  be  ? 
Are  teachers  of  literature  in  possession  of  methods 
of  teaching  comparable  in  applicability  and  preci- 
sion with  those  of  other  teachers  ?  Are  the  pupils 
they  teach  satisfactorily  trained  ?  Is  literature  as 
a  subject  of  instruction  really  on  a  par  with  other 
subjects  of  instruction  ? 

To  these  questions  varying  answers  will  be 
given.  I  myself  do  not  doubt  that  we  have  pro- 
gressed, although  I  do  doubt  whether  we  have 
made  much  advance.  I  suspect  that  our  methods 
are  still  very  faulty,  not  merely  because  literature 
is  a  difficult  subject  to  teach,  but  because  we  have 
not  thoroughly  analyzed  our  purposes  or  our 
means.  I  scarcely  believe  that  literature,  in  spite 
of  the  increased  attention  given  to  it,  is  on  a  par 
with  other  subjects  of  instruction.  And  I  even 
venture  to  question  whether  many  boys  and  girls 
go  to  college  with  a  greater  knowledge  and  love  of 
literature  than  was  the  case  before  they  were 
drilled  and  examined  in  the  redoubtable  "  English 
Classics."    Observe  that  I  do  not  question  that  our 


160  TEACHING   LITERATURE 

public  schools  have  done  something  very  useful  in 
bringing  into  some  contact  with  literature  masses 
of  children  who  a  generation  ago  would  have  been 
left  without  that  refining  influence  upon  their  lives. 
What  I  doubt  is  whether  the  generation  now  en- 
tering college,  after  a  course  of  literature  in  the 
schools,  is  much  better  off,  so  far  as  a  love  and  a 
knowledge  of  literature  are  concerned,  than  my 
own  generation  was  with  practically  no  training 
in  the  subject.  The  present  generation,  if  it  has 
been  properly  trained,  ought  to  be  a  good  deal 
better  off ;  but  while  it  is  certainly  a  most  athletic 
generation,  to  the  muscular  strength  and  dexterity 
of  which  I  willingly  pay  tribute,  it  has  not  suc- 
ceeded in  making  me  feel  that  it  knows  much 
more  about  Shakspere  and  Milton  and  Byron 
and  Shelley  than  we  benighted  youngsters  did 
over  twenty  years  ago. 

What  I  am  mainly  concerned  with,  however,  is 
the  question  from  which  I  have  wandered  away  — 
the  question  whether  we  teachers  of  literature  can 
safely  make  our  methods  as  rigid  as  those  of 
other  teachers,  and,  if  we  cannot,  whether  we 
can  convince  our  brother  teachers  of  the  sciences 
and  the  semi-sciences  that  our  methods  must  be 
radically  different  from  theirs.    This  question  with 


TEACHING   LITERATURE  l6l 

regard  to  rigidity  of  methods  is  an  old  one.  The 
late  Professor  Freeman,  the  historian,  violently 
opposed  the  establishment  of  a  chair  of  litera- 
ture at  Oxford.  "  We  cannot  examine,"  he  said, 
"in  tastes  and  sympathies."  To  which  Mr. 
Churton  Collins  replied :  "  No,  examine  in  the 
Poetics,  in  the  Rhetoric,  in  Quintilian's  Institutes, 
in  the  De  Sublimitatc,  in  the  Laocoon,  and  exam- 
ine with  the  object  of  testing  the  results  of  such 
discipline."  This  was  an  excellent  answer  so  far 
as  postgraduate  classes  in  criticism  were  con- 
cerned ;  but,  as  I  pointed  out  over  ten  years 
ago  in  The  Sewanee  Review,  Mr.  Collins  did  very 
little  to  help  school  and  college  teachers  of  litera- 
ture. These  have  to  examine,  let  us  say,  in  "  The 
Merchant  of  Venice,"  not  in  Aristotle,  Longinus, 
and  Lessing.  They  do  examine  in  the  former, 
and,  with  the  aid  of  the  notes  learned  editors 
furnish,  the  examinations  set  may  be  made  rigid 
enough  to  satisfy  the  most  censorious  critic.  But 
at  once  we  are  thrown  on  the  other  horn  of  our 
dilemma.  Do  we  not  sacrifice  the  spirit  of  lit- 
erature while  we  are  examining  on  the  letter,  or 
rather  training  our  poor  children  so  that  they 
may  stand  some  other  person's  examination  on 
the  letter  ?     As  the  dread  day  comes  around,  do 


1 62  TEACHING   LITERATURE 

teachers  find  themselves  and  their  classes  reading 
with  rapt  interest  the  noble  speeches  of  Portia,  or 
are  they  busy  with  the  date  of  the  play,  with 
some  critic's  opinion  with  regard  to  Portia's 
womanliness,  with  the  names  and  dates  of  act- 
ual women  lawyers  and  law  teachers  in  Italy, 
with  the  sources  of  the  caskets  incident,  and 
similar  matters  only  too  dear  to  examiners? 

I  do  not  know  how  others  feel  about  the  matter, 
but  I  know  that  after  about  two  years'  firm  grasp- 
ing of  the  rigid  horn  of  the  dilemma,  if  I  may 
so  express  it,  I  began  gradually  to  swing  my- 
self over  to  the  other  horn — to  what  I  may 
call  the  flexible  horn.  I  began  to  doubt  the 
value  of  strenuous  examinations  and  to  appre- 
ciate more  and  more  the  necessity  of  trying  to 
inculcate  in  my  students  some  of  the  high  moral 
and  spiritual  truths  taught  by  great  writers,  and 
to  impart  to  them  a  taste  for  reading,  a  love  of 
the  best  literature.  In  order  to  achieve  this  re- 
sult, even  to  a  slight  extent  (and  a  slight  success 
is  all  that  I  think  any  teacher  should  dare  to 
hope  for),  I  found  that  I  must  do  much  less  in- 
structing —  much  less  questioning  with  regard  to 
the  facts  of  literary  history  —  and  that  I  must  do 
far  more  reading   of   authors   than  talking  about 


TEACHING   LITERATURE  1 63 

them.  I  found  also  that  it  seemed  advisable,  in 
a  college  at  least,  to  make  a  distinction  between 
the  younger  and  the  older  students  —  to  treat 
the  younger  ones  somewhat  as  I  should  treat 
high-school  pupils,  the  older  ones  somewhat  as 
I  should  treat  postgraduate  students.  With  the 
latter  I  adopted  methods  which  need  not  be  dis- 
cussed here ;  with  the  former,  methods  which,  if 
sound,  should,  it  seems  to  me,  be  shared  in  the 
main  by  all  teachers  of  literature  in  schools;  for 
if  our  American  college  is  anything,  it  is  a  half- 
way house,  or  station,  between  the  high  school  and 
the  university.  In  consequence,  it  should  begin 
by  continuing  in  considerable  measure  the  meth- 
ods of  teaching  used  in  the  schools,  and  it  should 
gradually  change  these  methods  so  as  to  make 
them  lead  up  to  those  of  the  university. 

But  my  new  treatment  of  my  younger  students 
led  to  some  important  results.  Reading  so  much 
to  them  myself  and  giving  them  so  much  outside 
reading  to  do  left  no  time  for  the  study  of  a  for- 
mal manual  of  literary  history.  As  a  text-book 
of  that  sort  does  little  good  if  used  by  the  pupil 
alone,  it  followed  that  I  had  to  reduce  to  a 
minimum  the  study  of  the  history  of  literature.  I 
finally  required  the  reading  of  Stopford  Brooke's 


164  TEACHING   LITERATURE 

excellent  "  Primer  of  English  Literature,"  but  did 
not  examine  on  it.  I  knew  well  enough  that  I  was 
making  a  sacrifice  on  the  side  of  exact  knowledge, 
but  it  seemed  to  me  it  had  to  be  made.  There 
were  other  sacrifices  requisite.  I  like  to  criticise, 
I  like  to  theorize,  and  I  have  my  favorite  authors, 
some  of  whom  are  not  specially  suited  to  the  com- 
prehension and  needs  of  young  people.  I  found 
that  only  the  most  general  and  obvious  kind  of 
criticism  was  possible  under  my  new  system,  that 
much  theorizing  was  out  of  the  question,  and  that 
often  the  books  I  should  never  have  thought 
of  taking  down  from  my  shelves  for  my  own 
delectation  were  precisely  the  ones  I  ought  to 
take  down  for  the  delectation  and  profit  of  my 
students.  This  is  merely  to  say  that  I  learned  by 
bitter  experience  that  the  teacher  must  sacrifice 
to  his  students  his  preferences,  his  prejudices,  his 
time,  almost  everything  except  his  enthusiasm  and 
such  other  traits  as  make  him  a  real  individual. 
A  mere  repeater  of  other  people's  thoughts,  a  man 
or  woman  who  has  no  standards,  no  decided  points 
of  view,  will  certainly  fail  as  a  teacher ;  but  so  I 
think  will  the  man  or  woman  who  is  not  willing  to 
sacrifice  prejudices  and  preferences,  and  to  sym- 
pathize with  the  tastes  and  needs  of  students. 


TEACHING   LITERATURE  1 65 

Let  me  illustrate  my  meaning  by  a  concrete  inci- 
dent. I  had  an  excellent  assistant  once,  to  whom, 
however,  I  had  to  give  one  mild  scolding.  I  hap- 
pened to  overhear  him  making  fun  of  Scott's 
poetry  to  a  class  of  boys,  few  of  whom  were 
over  seventeen.  Neither  that  assistant  nor  my- 
self was  at  the  age  when  "  The  Lady  of  the 
Lake"  is  a  surpassing  delight;  but  those  boys 
were,  and  I  expostulated  with  the  jocular  teacher. 
He  could  scarcely  have  displayed  greater  fatuity, 
unless  he  had  imitated  a  bit  of  fatuity  I  myself 
had  been  guilty  of  a  few  years  before  —  that  is, 
ridiculing  Longfellow.  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to 
say  that  teaching  should  almost  invariably  be  posi- 
tive rather  than  negative  in  character.  It  should 
bring  out  the  merits  of  the  book  studied  rather 
than  its  defects.  It  should  aim  to  develop  in 
children  a  catholic  taste  for  everything  that  is 
good  in  literature,  rather  than  to  encourage  preju- 
dices, although  a  prejudice  in  favor  of  an  author 
or  a  book  should  be  dealt  with  cautiously.  This  is 
but  to  say  that  the  good  teacher  of  literature  must 
have  many  of  the  qualifications  requisite  to  a  good 
critic — he  must  be  sympathetic,  healthy  in  his 
tastes,  sound  in  his  judgments,  and  fairly  well 
read. 


1 66  TEACHING   LITERATURE 

But  the  teacher  who  devotes  himself  mainly  to 
wide   and   sympathetic   reading   with  his   classes, 
who  rarely  instructs  but  continually  endeavors  by 
direct  and  indirect  means  to  inculcate  humane  vir- 
tues and  develop  aesthetic  tastes—  in  other  words, 
to  instil  into  his  pupils  a  love  of  the  books  that 
illustrate  those  virtues  and  exercise  those  tastes  — 
must  be  prepared   to  make  other  sacrifices.     He 
must  be  prepared,  as  I  have  said,  to  sink  his  own 
preferences  for  special  books  and  to  use  such  as 
will  best  suit  his  pupils.     He  must  also  be  willing 
to  rely  on  his  own  judgment  rather  than  on  the 
judgments  of  others,  even  of   omniscient   college 
professors.     If  the  annotated  texts  furnished  him 
do  not  produce  the  best  results,  he  must  eschew 
their   use  as  far  as  he   may.     Personally  I  have 
found    such    texts    occasionally    valuable,    but    I 
prefer    Palgrave's    "  Golden    Treasury    of    Songs 
and  Lyrics  "  *  to  any  annotated  text  I  ever  used, 
and  that  delightful  anthology,  I  need  scarcely  say, 
is  one  that  every  teacher  should  be  glad  to  take 
down  from  his  shelves  for  his  own  enjoyment. 

1  It  is  a  pleasure  to  notice  that  the  larger  part  of  this  book  has 
been  added  to  the  list  of  volumes  that  may  be  read  by  pupils  pre- 
paring for  college,  and  that  teachers  now  have  a  wider  range  of 
books  to  select  from.  But  it  is  the  methods  rather  than  the  mate- 
rials of  instruction  that  are  chiefly  in  question. 


TEACHING   LITERATURE  167 

But  the  teacher  must  often  make  a  sacrifice 
of  part  of  what  may  be  called  his  technical 
equipment.  Most  of  us  are  trained  to  question 
our  students  systematically  and  to  make  use  of 
the  tests  furnished  by  oral  and  written  exami- 
nations. Yet  I  do  not  see,  any  more  than  Pro- 
fessor Freeman  did,  how  the  teacher  can 
examine  on  tastes  and  sympathies,  how  he  can 
ask  questions  about  the  humane  virtues,  without 
running  great  risk  of  making  his  students  prigs, 
and  himself  —  what  shall  I  say?  —  a  canting 
Pharisee?  Perhaps  that  is  too  strong  —  let  me 
say  a  plain  fool.  I  believe  it  to  be  very  foolish 
to  make  young  people  self-conscious  with  regard 
to  spiritual  and  aesthetic  things  by  insisting  upon 
their  talking  and  writing  about  them.  It  is 
still  more  foolish  to  think  that  one  can  satisfac- 
torily mark  and  grade  their  answers  on  such 
topics. 

But  some  one  may  ask :  "  Can  we  not  exam- 
ine on  the  facts  we  instruct  in,  and  require 
essays  on  the  spiritual  and  aesthetic  matters  we 
inculcate  and  impart  ?  By  means  of  a  combina- 
tion of  marks  for  diligence  and  interest  shown 
in  class  work,  for  success  in  written  examina- 
tions, and   for  ability  displayed   in   the   composi- 


1 68  TEACHING   LITERATURE 

tion  of  themes  and  essays,  can  we  not  grade  our 
pupils  in  a  thoroughly  satisfactory  manner  ? " 

So  far  as  marks  for  diligence  and  interest  in 
class  work  are  concerned,  I  fancy  that  no  school 
superintendent  or  principal  or  fellow-teacher  in 
another  study  will  deny  that  a  good  teacher 
of  literature  is  able  to  grade  his  pupils  satis- 
factorily. So  far  as  advancement  in  school  or 
college  is  dependent  upon  such  grading,  which 
is  itself  dependent  upon  the  judgment  of  the 
individual  teacher,  I  cannot  see  that  literature 
stands  on  a  markedly  different  footing  from 
other  studies.  With  regard  to  examinations  on 
the  facts  of  ■  literary  history  and  biography,  I 
suppose  their  disciplinary  value  is  not  less  than 
that  of  examinations  in  many  other  studies. 
Their  value  as  a  means  to  store  the  mind  with 
useful  and  available  knowledge  is  more  ques- 
tionable, and,  although  literature  means  much 
to  me  personally,  I  am  obliged  to  confess  that 
I  doubt  whether  it  is  not  outranked  by  most 
other  studies  as  a  body  of  useful  and  avail- 
able knowledge.  As  matters  stand,  teachers 
must  examine  in  it.  The  colleges  require  en- 
trance examinations  and  will  continue  for  some 
time   to   require   them  —  whether   or    not    a    few 


TEACHING   LITERATURE  1 69 

unfashionable  people  like  myself  think  they 
have  made  too  much  of  a  fetich  of  their  written 
tests. 

I  gladly  admit  that  probably  the  required 
examinations  on  English  texts  have  done  good 
in  making  room  for  the  study  of  English  litera- 
ture in  schools,  and  that  as  a  temporary  expedi- 
ent the  establishment  of  the  system  was  warranted. 
But  I  think  that  a  radical  change  in  the  methods 
of  preparing  boys  and  girls  for  college  is  called 
for,  —  so  far  at  least  as  English  is  concerned,  — 
since  I  doubt  whether  more  or  less  rigid  exami- 
nations in  literature  now  help  the  colleges  or 
the  school-teachers  greatly,  and  I  suspect  they 
help  the  unfortunate  pupils  still  less.  I  doubt 
if  any  of  us  knows  so  clearly  as  the  teacher  of 
mathematics  does,  for  example,  in  his  specialty, 
what  amount  of  knowledge  of  literary  history 
and  biography,  and  of  metrical,  linguistic,  and 
rhetorical  facts  needed  in  literary  studies,  a 
Freshman  should  possess  on  entering  college.  I 
doubt  whether  any  of  us  can  be  truly  said  to 
be  very  sapient  with  regard  to  the  best  methods 
of  conveying  this  unknown  minimum  of  instruc- 
tion,—  for  that  there  should  be  some  instruction 
in    these    matters    is    clear,  —  and    I    also    doubt 


170  TEACHING  LITERATURE 

whether  most  of  the  instruction  we  do  attempt 
does  not  frequently  act  as  a  deterrent  from  the 
true  comprehension  and  enjoyment  of  literature. 
I  will  even  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  at  present  I 
should  prefer  to  admit  to  college  on  positive 
tests  in  composition,  rhetoric,  and  grammar,  — 
in  other  words,  on  tests  relating  to  the  use  of 
the  vernacular,  —  and  on  the  statement  by  the 
teacher  that  the  pupil  had  done  a  wide  amount 
of  reading  under  direction. 

For  it  is  wide  reading  that  best  develops  any 
native  love  of  literature,  that  is  most  likely  to 
bring  out  a  latent  love  for  it,  and  that  not  in- 
frequently leads  to  the  attainment  of  a  greater 
knowledge  of  the  facts  of  literary  history  and 
biography  than  is  often  secured  through  cut-and- 
dried  methods  of  instruction.  It  is  a  lack  of 
fairly  wide  reading  on  the  part  of  students  and 
a  certain  inflexibility  of  taste  resulting  from 
narrow  reading  and  faulty  literary  instruction 
that  hamper  me  more  than  anything  else  in 
teaching  college  classes.  It  is  this  same  lack 
of  wide  reading  that  chiefly  discourages  post- 
graduate students  during  the  first  year  of  their 
university  course  and  that  renders  so  many  of 
their  dissertations  jejune  and  amateurish.     I  grant 


TEACHING   LITERATURE  171 

that  the  school  and  college  curriculums  are  so 
crowded  that  it  is  almost  unfair  to  expect  of 
pupils  and  students  as  much  general  reading 
as  was  done  by  some  of  my  contemporaries ; 
but  I  believe  that  if  the  annotation  employed 
in  the  school  classics  were  reduced  in  amount, 
and  if  examinations  in  literature  in  school  or 
college  were  either  done  away  with  or  mini- 
mized, the  time  saved  might  be  profitably  em- 
ployed in  reading.  The  amount  and  quality  of 
this  reading  could  be  at  least  fairly  tested  —  not 
so  well,  perhaps,  by  concrete  questions,  which 
might  be  anticipated  by  the  pupil,  as  by  the 
intelligence  with  which  certain  passages  were 
read  aloud.  This  would  not  be  a  conclusive 
test.  The  bright  pupil  willing  to  be  dishonest 
could  easily  pretend  to  have  read  more  than 
he  had  done ;  but  is  any  test  that  can  be  de- 
vised sufficiently  flexible  to  catch  bright  dishonest 
pupils  without  being  unfair  to  less  bright  and 
more  honest  ones  ? 

Whether  now  the  school  authorities  would  be 
satisfied  to  admit  to  the  programme  of  studies  a 
subject  in  which  no  examinations  were  held, 
even  if  the  colleges  waived  entrance  examina- 
tions   on    it,    is    a    point    on    which    I    have    no 


172  TEACHING   LITERATURE 

data  for  forming  an  opinion.  I  should  think, 
however,  that  a  fairly  satisfactory  system  of 
grading  could  be  built  up  on  marks  for  dili- 
gence, which  are  in  the  nature  of  conduct  marks, 
and  on  the  time  spent  on  reading  in  class  as  well 
as  on  the  hours  presumably  covered  by  the  out- 
side reading.  Such  a  system  of  grading  could 
also  take  into  account  the  character  of  the  read- 
ing aloud  done  by  the  pupil;  and  on  the  intelli- 
gence displayed  in  this,  on  the  general  diligence 
vouched  for  by  the  teacher,  and  on  the  time  de- 
voted to  reading  by  the  pupil  I  should  imagine 
that  all  questions  relating  to  advancement  could 
be  determined  satisfactorily  to  parents,  principals, 
and  fellow-teachers.  Such  satisfaction  would  nat- 
urally depend  upon  all  parties  concerned  being 
made  to  see  clearly  that  rigid  examinations  and 
other  tests  in  literary  studies  not  only  do  little 
positive  good,  but  are  really  harmful  as  lessening 
the  teacher's  opportunities  to  inculcate  and  train 
rather  than  to  instruct,  and  as  boring  pupils  and 
putting  a  barrier  between  them  and  that  body  of 
literature  with  which  it  is  most  essential  that  they 
should  be  brought  into  frequent  and  prolonged 
contact.  If,  finally,  written  tests  must  be  set  in 
order  not  to  disturb  too  violently  the  school  ma- 


TEACHING   LITERATURE  173 

chinery,  why  should  it  not  be  understood  that  all 
examinations  in  literature  would  be  graded  on  the 
interest,  diligence,  and  general  intelligence  shown 
by  the  pupil,  and  on  his  ability  to  write  correct 
English,  rather  than  on  his  knowledge  of  facts 
about  literature,  except  as  regards  that  unknown 
minimum  of  instruction  about  which  a  word  will 
be  said  later?  Such  examinations  would  supple- 
ment those  given  in  English  composition,  would 
throw  fresh  light  upon  the  character  and  mental 
attainments  of  each  pupil,  and  would  assist  in  the 
determination  of  all  questions  relative  to  advance- 
ment. They  would  also  furnish  those  ocular  evi- 
dences of  a  pupil's  immaturity  or  unwillingness 
to  apply  himself  that  are  so  needed  by  teachers 
whenever  their  decisions  are  disputed. 

But  the  third  sort  of  test  mentioned  above  re- 
mains to  be  considered  —  the  test  furnished  by  the 
writing  of  frequent  essays.  This  is  much  favored 
by  some  teachers,  and  it  is  doubtless  successful 
when  the  pupil  has  an  aptitude  for  writing.  But 
that  aptitude  is  comparatively  rare,  and  I  am  not 
sure  that  essay-writing  is  not  nearly  or  quite  as  bad 
for  most  young  people  as  rigid  examinations  in 
literature  are  likely  to  be.  In  this  particular  I 
fear    I    am    a   grievous   heretic.       Neatly   written 


174  TEACHING   LITERATURE 

essays  are  such  gentlemanly  and  ladylike  things 
—  especially  when  they  are  tied  with  ribbons.  I 
always  feel  as  if  I  were  highly  honored  when  a 
nice  young  man  or  woman  presents  me  with  the 
product  of  many  hours'  study  and  creative  energy, 
particularly  when  it  is  typewritten  and  of  moder- 
ate length.  When  the  writer  is  a  person  of  some 
maturity,  a  graduate  student  who  has  done  either 
a  small  or  a  large  amount  of  individual  research,  I 
examine  the  essay  with  pleasure,  both  because  I 
very  frequently  learn  something  I  am  glad  to 
know  and  because  I  feel  that  I  may  be  of  service 
in  directing  a  bent  for  study  which  I  presume  to 
exist  from  the  fact  that  the  graduate  student  has 
taken  the  trouble  to  enter  as  a  candidate  for  a 
higher  degree. 

But  for  the  school  or  college  essay  used  as  a 
test  of  literary  work  rather  than  as  a  test  of  work 
in  English  composition,  I  must  confess  I  have 
very  little  respect.  I  fear  that  it  encourages 
smattering,  that  it  stimulates  juvenile  conceit,  that 
it  tends  to  crystallize  tastes  and  opinions  at  an 
age  when  every  effort  should  be  made  to  widen 
and  lend  flexibility  to  the  mind,  that  it  leads 
to  unconscious  plagiarism  and  to  a  complacent 
habit  of  airing  one's  commonplaceness  and  fatuity. 


TEACHING   LITERATURE  175 

I  wish  to  avoid  seeming  extreme,  but  I  must  say- 
that  American  schools  and  colleges  have  in  my 
judgment  set  far  too  high  a  premium  upon  essay- 
writing.  I  gather  from  some  remarks  of  Mr. 
Frederic  Harrison  that  this  has  been  done  in 
England  also,  and  I  am  glad  that  in  Mr.  Harrison 
I  find  at  least  one  sharer  of  my  pessimistic  views 
with  regard  to  the  future  of  a  race  that  is  encour- 
aged from  its  earliest  youth  to  write  itself  down 
with  Dogberry.  I  have  no  quarrel,  of  course, 
with  the  theme  or  essay  employed  as  a  means  to 
improve  a  student's  use  of  his  mother  tongue  ;  I 
have  no  quarrel  with  it  employed  as  a  means  to 
develop  the  critical  powers  and  the  literary  tastes 
of  students  who  in  one  way  or  another  have  given 
evidence  of  aptitude  for  the  study  of  letters ;  I 
have  no  quarrel  with  the  essay  or  written  report 
used  moderately  in  connection  with  classes  in 
literature,  especially  in  universities.  What  moves 
me  to  wrath  is  our  national  habit  of  requiring 
graduation  theses  of  Harry  and  Lucy,  no  matter 
whether  they  want  to  write  them  or  not,  and  of 
insisting  that  they  inflict  them  upon  adult  audi- 
ences. I  am  also  moved  to  pity,  when  I  see  teach- 
ers loaded  down  with  bundles  of  essays  on  literary 
topics  which  they  have  conceived   it   to  be  their 


1 76  TEACHING   LITERATURE 

duty  to  demand  from  every  member  of  their 
classes.  I  cannot  help  believing  that  nine  out  of 
ten  of  those  essays  give  no  real  evidence  of  any 
higher  power  than  that  of  extracting  jejune  informa- 
tion from  encyclopaedias  and  from  the  writings  of 
other  people.  The  tenth,  perhaps,  gives  evidence 
of  something  better;  but  cannot  the  teacher 
find  out  this  tenth  student  without  making  the 
other  nine  dish  up  a  hebdomadal  hash  of  plati- 
tudes ? 

Any  teacher  who  will  not  encourage  and  guide 
any  student  honestly  desirous  of  learning  how  to 
write  upon  literary  topics  is  unworthy  of  the  name 
of  teacher.  Any  man  of  letters  who  does  not 
remember  that  he  was  once  a  neophyte  himself, 
and  gladly  give  what  help  he  can  to  a  competent 
young  man  or  woman  purposing  to  enter  upon  a 
literary  life,  is  unworthy  of  the  standing  he  has 
obtained.  But  the  teacher  or  man  of  letters  who 
encourages  every  one,  regardless  of  natural 
aptitude,  to  write  literary  essays  upon  every 
possible  occasion  seems  to  me  to  be  doing  little 
good  either  to  the  individual  encouraged  or  to 
the  cause  of  education.  If  the  amount  of  time 
spent  by  average  school  children  and  college 
students  in  consulting  encyclopaedias  and  compiling 


TEACHING   LITERATURE  1 77 

essays  were  devoted  to  good  reading,  I  fancy  that 
the  cause  of  culture  would  be  greatly  subserved. 
I  would  give  every  child  the  chance  to  develop 
whatever  faculty  it  may  have  for  writing  —  just  as 
I  would  give  it  the  chance  to  develop  its  presump- 
tive faculty  for  drawing,  for  music,  and  for  the 
other  arts  —  but  I  think  that  this  should  be  done 
by  the  teacher  of  composition,  who  can  easily  call 
in  the  teacher  of  literature  to  lend  his  aid  should 
the  case  seem  to  require  it.  For  the  teacher  of 
literature,  however,  to  divert  his  energies  from  his 
greatest  task  of  inculcating  a  love  of  wide  reading 
to  inculcating  in  Harry  and  Lucy  a  desire  to 
see  themselves  in  print  or  to  hear  themselves 
on  a  commencement  platform  is  to  me  at  least 
a  most  questionable  procedure.1  And  surely  the 
mere  knowledge  amassed  by  the  essay  writer  does 
not  compensate  for  the  injury  that  may  be  done 
him  in  the  ways  I  have  mentioned. 

I  cannot  forbear  suggesting  here,  at  the  risk 
of  being  accused  of  impertinence  in  discussing 
matters  about  which  I  am  not  expert,  that  latter- 

1  Some  relief  seems  to  be  in  sight,  especially  in  the  large  uni- 
versities, probably  in  part  on  account  of  the  size  of  their  graduating 
classes.  Columbia  has  for  some  years  heard  no  student  orations  on 
commencement  day  and  has  just  (1905)  ceased  to  require  gradu- 
ation theses. 


178  TEACHING   LITERATURE 

day  teachers  of  composition  have  as  many  fun- 
damental problems  to  solve  as  confront  teachers 
of  literature.  It  is  very  doubtful,  as  some  of  the 
inaugurators  of  the  modern  "  theme-courses  "  con- 
fess, whether  the  expensive  and  time-consuming 
methods  of  teaching  boys  and  girls  to  write  with 
something  approaching  a  style  have  produced 
results  at  all  commensurate  with  the  labor  ex- 
pended. Perhaps  it  has  not  been  realized  that 
all  instruction  in  composition  after  the  pupil  has 
been  trained,  if  he  can  be,  to  write  a  short  series 
of  coherent  and  intelligible  paragraphs,  fairly 
idiomatic  and  free  from  blunders,  —  a  not  dis- 
creditable letter,  for  example,  —  is  at  bottom,  so 
far  as  concerns  style,  instruction  in  an  art.  It 
follows  that  the  experience  and  practice  of  the 
world  in  the  matter  of  teaching  the  fine  arts 
should  be  carefully  studied  by  the  teacher  of  the 
higher  grades  of  composition.  We  are  beginning 
to  see,  as  I  have  just  intimated,  that  it  is  only 
fair  to  any  child  to  give  it  an  opportunity  to 
show  whether  it  has  any  aptitude  for  music,  draw- 
ing, and  the  other  arts.  Just  so,  I  repeat,  we 
ought  to  give  and  are  giving  our  children  an 
opportunity  in  the  elementary  courses  in  composi- 
tion to  show  whether  they  have  in  them  the  faint- 


TEACHING   LITERATURE  1 79 

est  desire  or  capacity  to  do  creative  writing  and 
to  acquire  the  rudiments  of  a  style.  It  would  be 
sheer  folly,  however,  to  keep  a  boy  or  girl  at  the 
study  of  music  or  drawing  to  the  age  of  twenty 
or  thereabouts  when  not  a  trace  of  aptitude  for 
either  art  had  ever  been  apparent  in  them.  Is 
it  particularly  wise  to  encourage  equally  incom- 
petent students  of  the  art  of  writing  to  manufac- 
ture short  stories  or  sets  of  verses  or  essays  or 
book  reviews  —  especially  to  do  this  at  the  ex- 
pense of  training  in  old-fashioned,  but  not  useless, 
formal  rhetoric  ?  Cannot  some  of  the  "  required  " 
hours  in  English  during  the  Freshman  and  Sopho- 
more years  be  saved  for  reading  under  the  super- 
vision of  an  instructor  skilled  in  pointing  out 
stylistic  features,  and  ought  we  not  to  recognize 
the  fact  that,  save  in  exceptional  cases,  the  proper 
affiliations  of  good  work  in  advanced  composition 
are  with  logic  rather  than  with  the  fine  arts.  For 
one  good  story-teller  or  essayist  turned  out  by  our 
colleges  they  might  furnish  us,  I  suspect,  a  hun- 
dred good  debaters,  if  they  only  would. 

Perhaps  I  ought  to  give  two  experiences  I  have 
had  in  this  connection  that  will  help  to  explain  the 
strong  language  I  have  employed.  I  shall  not 
§oon  forget  the  disgust  I  felt  when  an  old  teacher 


l8o  TEACHING   LITERATURE 

of  mine  —  a  most  admirable  man  in  many  ways  — 
once  told  his  class  complacently  how  he  had  won 
a  prize  of  fifty  dollars  for  an  essay  on  Chaucer. 
He  had  never  read  a  line  of  that  great  poet,  but 
he  took  "  Poole's  Index,"  read  up  his  subject  in 
various  magazine  articles,  and  was  clever  enough 
to  win  the  prize.  He  told  us  that  story  with  pride, 
and  practically  said  to  each  one  of  us,  "  Go  thou 
and  do  likewise."  It  seemed  to  me  that  although 
he  had  not  cut  off  his  hand  before  writing  that 
essay,  he  ought  to  have  cut  out  his  tongue  before 
boasting  about  it.  Yet  how  much  smattering  and 
intellectual  dishonesty  similar  to  his  must  have 
been  fostered  in  this  country  by  the  givers  of 
prizes,  the  assigners  of  essays,  the  conductors  of 
literary  clubs! 

My  second  experience  was  more  amusing  and 
less  nauseating.  I  used,  years  ago,  to  be  pestered 
by  a  worthy  but  very  immature  student  to  give 
him  bibliographies  that  would  help  him  to  write 
essays  on  Dante,  Petrarch,  and  other  great  poets 
of  whose  works  I  knew  he  had  never  read  a  line. 
The  same  student  was  acting  as  private  secretary 
to  one  of  my  friends,  and,  whenever  his  em- 
ployer went  out,  this  youthful  essayist  would  go 
to   the   front  door   and   hail  passers-by  with  the 


TEACHING   LITERATURE  l8l 

request  that  they  would  spell  for  him  words  of  two 
or  more  syllables  that  occurred  in  the  letters  he 
had  to  typewrite.  I  am  not,  I  believe,  niggardly 
of  my  time  where  students  are  concerned ;  but  the 
incursions  of  that  young  man  into  my  study  for 
books  on  Italian  literature,  when  he  should  have 
asked  to  borrow  a  Webster's  Spelling  Book,  tried 
my  patience  sorely. 

Now  a  word  in  conclusion  with  regard  to  that 
unknown  minimum  of  knowledge  of  literary  his- 
tory and  biography,  and  of  metrical,  rhetorical,  and 
linguistic  facts,  which  a  Freshman  should  be  pre- 
sumed to  possess  on  entering  college.  My  lan- 
guage here  must  be  very  tentative,  for  I  must 
confess  that  the  topic  is  one  that  has  long  puzzled 
me  sorely.  As  for  the  metrical,  rhetorical,  and  lin- 
guistic facts,  it  would  be  a  comfort  to  rely  for 
instruction  in  them  on  the  teacher  of  English 
composition.  As  for  the  literary  history  and  bi- 
ography, it  would  be  a  comfort  to  rely  on  the 
teacher  of  history  proper ;  for  literature  is  a  part 
of  culture,  and  we  must  sooner  or  later  wake  up  to 
the  fact  that  culture-history  should  share  with 
political  and  military  history  the  attention  of  school 
children.  But  I  doubt  whether  the  teachers  of 
history  and  of  composition  will  care  to  have  their 


1 82  TEACHING   LITERATURE 

labors  greatly  increased,  and  I  suppose  we  must 
blunder  along  until  some  one  writes  us  a  common 
sense  "Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Literature" 
in  which  this  minimum  of  positive  knowledge  is 
conveyed  in  an  agreeable  fashion. 

But  I  have  promulgated  heresies  enough  for  one 
paper.  I  have  frankly  stated  my  belief  that  the 
time  devoted  to  spiritual  inculcation  and  to  aesthetic 
training  is  of  far  more  importance  than  that  de- 
voted to  instruction  in  the  facts  of  literature,  and 
I  draw  hence  the  conclusion  that  we  teachers  of 
literature  ought  bravely  to  say  to  our  fellow- 
teachers  something  like  this :  "  We  can,  if  we 
please,  make  our  examinations  as  rigid  as  you  do 
yours,  but  we  do  not  believe  that  our  facts  are  as 
important  as  yours,  or  at  any  rate  that  they  may 
be  acquired  with  so  much  advantage  to  our  pupils. 
We  wish  to  grade  and  advance  our  pupils  on  more 
flexible  lines  than  you  adopt,  because  we  believe 
that  the  nature  of  our  subject  makes  such  flexible 
lines  advisable.  We  believe  that  both  the  subject 
we  teach  and  the  subjects  you  teach  are  necessary 
to  a  catholic  education  ;  but  that,  while  we  are 
contributing  to  the  same  end  as  you,  our  means 
must  be  different  from  yours." 

Some   such    appeal,    accompanied    by   friendly 


TEACHING   LITERATURE  183 

discussion,  will,  I  am  sure,  in  time  satisfy  every 
intelligent  person  that  no  harm  to  school  discipline 
will  be  done  if  the  teaching  of  literature  finally 
resolves  itself  into  little  more  than  securing  a  wide 
amount  of  reading  from  children  during  their 
school  years.  It  will,  I  trust,  in  time  satisfy  the 
colleges  that  the  examinations  they  now  hold  on 
selected  English  classics  are  more  or  less  useless 
and  should  be  modified  or  dropped.  Finally,  I 
hope  that  the  study  we  must  all  give  to  the  prob- 
lems connected  with  the  teaching  of  literature 
will  sooner  or  later  lead  us  —  I  will  not  say  to  be- 
came teetotalers  with  regard  to  our  national  dissi- 
pation in  essay-writing  —  but  at  least  moderate  in 
our  use  of  that  seductive  form  of  mental  titillation. 
When  I  see  young  ladies  and  gentlemen  armed 
with  their  numerous  and  formidable  essays,  I  am 
irresistibly  reminded  of  the  young  woman  who 
drank  so  many  cups  of  tea  that  the  elder  Mr. 
Weller  was  compelled  to  exclaim  that  she  was 
"  a  swellin'  wisibly."  I  seem  to  see  the  young 
lady  and  gentleman  essayists  "  swellin'  wisibly  " 
with  mental  pride.  Let  us  have  fewer  new  bad 
essays  written  and  more  good  old  books  read.1 

1  I  may  be  permitted,  I  trust,  to  express  here  my  gratification 
at  the  notice  taken  of  this  article  by  The  Dial,  The  Evening  Post, 


1 84  TEACHING   LITERATURE 

and  other  journals,  and  also  to  thank  the  persons  who  wrote  me 
expressing  their  sympathy  with  my  views.  One  letter  in  par- 
ticular from  Dean  Sidney  Edward  Mezes  of  the  University  of  Texas 
contained  a  passage  which  I  extract,  with  the  writer's  permission. 

"  One  suggestion  in  a  matter  of  detail  I  wish  to  make,  to  meet 
the  objection,  on  the  part  of  teachers  of  other  subjects,  that  liter- 
ature without  examinations  or  other  tests  is  a  •  snap.'  Why  might 
not  the  literature  classes  meet  with  the  instructor  for  twice  or  even 
three  times  as  many  hours  as  other  classes  that  count  equally 
toward  degrees?  This  would  put  them,  in  important  respects,  on 
a  par  with  laboratory  courses,  and,  I  think,  would  do  away  with 
the  objection  mentioned." 

Certainly,  if  the  cost  of  such  extra  instruction  could  be  met  and 
if  the  additional  hours  were  secured  equitably  to  all  parties  and 
studies  concerned,  no  believer  in  the  good  effects  of  adequate 
instruction  in  literature  would  be  likely  to  demur  to  Dean  Mezes's 
suggestion. 


VII 

SOME    REMARKS    ON    MODERN 
BOOK-BURNING 


[Read  in  part  before  the  English  Club  of  Amherst  College, 
April  27,  1905.] 


VII 

SOME   REMARKS  ON  MODERN 
BOOK-BURNING 

I 

I  have  just  been  reading  for  the  first  time  James 
Anthony  Froude's  notorious  rather  than  famous 
religious  story,  "  The  Nemesis  of  Faith,  or,  The 
History  of  Markham  Sutherland."  This  far  from 
ponderous  or  formidable  deliverance  of  a  brilliant 
young  Oxford  deacon,  who  had  passed  from  under 
the  sway  of  Newman  only  to  experience  soon  that 
of  Carlyle  and,  to  a  less  extent,  that  of  Emerson, 
went  through  two  editions,  and  then,  save  for  an 
American  reprint  of  1880,  practically  disappeared 
from  public  attention  for  fifty-four  years.  In  1903 
the  story  was  reissued  with  an  introduction  by  Mr. 
Moncure  D.  Conway,  and  it  was  this  resuscitation, 
together  with  an  anecdote  Mr.  Conway  tells,  that 
prompted  me  to  make  it  a  text  for  the  present 
discussion. 

187     . 


1 88     SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING 

As  a  piece  of  fiction  the  book,  though  not 
commonplace,  is  thin  enough.  It  consists  of  ten 
letters  from  a  young  man  describing  how  he 
had  lost  his  hold  on  Christianity,  how  he  is  per- 
suaded to  take  orders,  how  he  fails  as  a  priest. 
Then  follow  some  of  this  Markham  Sutherland's 
reflections  on  religious  topics,  then  his  "  Confes- 
sions of  a  Sceptic,"  and,  in  conclusion,  a  friendly 
hand  describes  his  miserable  fate.  Seeking  health 
and  peace  of  mind  in  Italy,  he  encounters  a  mar- 
ried woman  to  whom  he  becomes  devoted,  and 
whose  love  he  wins  because  she  has  never  loved 
her  husband  —  a  gentleman  who  displays  singu- 
lar obtuseness  in  the  whole  affair.  The  lovers 
stop  short  of  adultery ;  but  the  woman's  little 
daughter  falls  into  a  mortal  illness,  partly  through 
their  negligence ;  they  are  racked  by  remorse ; 
and  each  dies  miserable  —  under  the  shadow  of 
the  Church  of  Rome. 

Of  immoral  intent  the  book  was  plainly  in- 
nocent ;  of  noxious  effect  it  must  have  been 
almost  equally  innocent.  Historical  and  philo- 
sophical doubts  with  regard  to  the  truth  of  the 
Christian  mysteries  were  in  the  air,  as  the  Tran- 
scendental Movement  in  America  and,  in  the  op- 
posite sense,  the  reactionary  Tractarian  Movement 


SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING     1 89 

in  England  had  plainly  shown,  and  as  Tennyson's 
"  In  Memoriam"  was  conclusively  to  prove  the  next 
year.  Froude  set  forth  his  hero's  doubts  with  not 
a  little  learning  and  with  more  eloquence  —  in- 
deed, there  are  two  brilliant  pages  descriptive  of 
the  "  Pagani,  Pagans,  the  old  country  villagers " 
loyal  to  their  gods,  which  the  later  master  of  Eng- 
lish prose  might  have  owned  with  pride.  But 
his  book  was  amorphous,  it  shifted  its  centre  of 
interest,  it  was  over-hospitable  to  purple  passages 
of  rhetoric  —  in  short,  it  was  too  full  of  youthful 
faults  to  shake  the  faith  of  many  souls  in  stolid 
England.  The  question  of  morals  raised  by  its 
closing  pages — to  wit,  the  innocence  or  guilt 
of  the  love  given  by  a  married  woman  to  the 
first  man  who  has  truly  touched  her  heart  —  was 
undoubtedly  offensive  to  many  persons,  espe- 
cially in  view  of  the  fact  that  Froude  was  a  dea- 
con and  a  fellow  at  Oxford ;  but  his  handling  of 
the  delicate  situation  was  surely  not  such  as  to 
increase  the  number  of  separations  and  divorces. 
What  chiefly  strikes  one  on  reading  this  sup- 
posedly advanced,  if  not  incendiary,  book  of  1849, 
is  how  far  it  falls  short  of  what  would  be  deemed 
shockingly  radical  in  1905.  Since  "  The  Nemesis 
of  Faith  "  was  first  published,  Darwin  and  Spencer 


I90    SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING 

and  the  philosophy  of  evolution  have  had  to  be 
reckoned  with,  to  say  nothing  of  the  highest 
claims  of  the  so-called  "  higher  criticism " ;  yet 
Faith  is  still  far  from  admitting  that  she  has 
seen  her  Nemesis,  whether  in  sober  treatise  or  in 
persuasive  story.  Since  Froude's  book,  "  Robert 
Elsmere  "  and  many  another  religious  novel  have 
come  and  gone ;  and  the  limits  of  the  fiction  of 
passion  have  been  pushed  back  almost  far  enough 
to  satisfy  a  Frenchman.  Mr.  James's  cracked 
"  Golden  Bowl  "  may,  for  aught  I  know,  be  sym- 
bolical of  the  disastrous  fate  awaiting,  if  it  has 
not  overtaken,  that  singular  product  of  art,  the 
English  novel  for  family  consumption. 

But,  as  if  men  could  never  learn  the  lesson 
that  denunciation  and  persecution  are  the  most 
effective  forms  of  propaganda,  as  if  they  could 
never  see  that  any  manifestation  of  hatred  is 
likely  to  produce  results  unforeseen  and  undesired 
in  a  world  in  which  the  law  of  love  is  almost  as 
potent  and  universal  in  the  moral  sphere  as  that 
of  gravitation  is  in  the  physical  sphere,  this  youth- 
ful manifesto  of  scepticism  met  a  fate  at  Oxford 
at  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  not  so 
very  different  from  what  it  would  have  encoun- 
tered at  Rome  or  at  Geneva  at  the  middle  of  the 


SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING     191 

sixteenth.  "  Froude's  novel,"  says  Mr.  Conway, 
"must  be  introduced  to  the  twentieth  century 
with  the  distinction  of  being  the  only  book 
piously  burnt  at  Oxford  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. On  February  27,  1849,  a  few  weeks  after 
its  publication,  Professor  Sewell,  lecturer  in  Ex- 
eter College,  vehemently  denounced  the  work 
in  his  lecture,  and,  discovering  that  a  student 
present  had  a  copy  before  him,  seized  it  fu- 
riously and  dashed  it  into  the  hall  fire.  In  1892, 
when  Froude  was  appointed  Regius  Professor 
of  Modern  History  at  Oxford,  some  efforts  were 
made  to  relieve  the  university  of  all  responsi- 
bility for  this  conduct  of  a  professor  whose 
subsequent  career  was  not  honorable.  But  the 
university  made  itself  a  passive  accessory  by 
uttering  no  protest.  Froude  was  a  fellow  of  the 
college  in  which  the  incident  occurred,  and  im- 
mediately sent  in  his  resignation.  Exeter  Col- 
lege saw  its  ablest  fellow  driven  out  without  a 
word  of  protest.  His  friend  Clough  soon  after 
resigned  his  fellowship  in  Balliol,  no  doubt  feel- 
ing that  Oxford  was  no  place  for  him  if  Froude 
could  be  dishonored  there  with  impunity." 

The  immediate  result  was,  of  course,  the  sale  of 
the  entire  edition.     A  less  immediate  but  almost 


192     SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING 

equally  inevitable  result  was  that  Professor  Will- 
iam Sewell  is  to-day  known,  if  at  all  save  to  theo- 
logians, chiefly  through  his  absurd  attention  to  the 
Exeter  Hall  fire  of  half  a  century  ago,  and  that,  in 
consequence,  the  fact  that  he  could  not  pay  his 
debts,  and  was  forced  to  take  up  his  residence 
on  the  Continent,  like  some  of  Thackeray's  shady 
characters,  is  remembered  whenever  his  name  is 
recalled.  Doubtless,  as  Mr.  Conway  says,  he 
would  not  have  acted  so  foolishly  if  he  had  not 
been  outraged,  not  merely  by  Froude's  heresies, 
but  by  the  latter's  failure  to  take  an  orthodox 
attitude  toward  the  moral  or  immoral  relations 
of  his  hero  and  heroine.  The  man  who  com- 
pounds for  sins  he  is  inclined  to  by  damning 
those  he  has  no  mind  to  has  been  a  sufficiently 
familiar  phenomenon  from  Adam  to  Butler,  from 
Butler  to  Sewell,  and  from  Sewell  to  us.  It  is 
only  fair  to  add  that  Professor  Sevvell's  debts 
seem  to  have  been  incurred  in  founding  a  high 
church  college  and  a  similar  school,  so  that  Mr. 
Conway's  unqualified  assertion  of  his  "notorious 
laxity  in  money  affairs"  does  him  an  injury 
which,  in  a  sense,  is  only  poetic  justice. 

But    all    this    does    not   prove    that    Professor 
Sewell,     though    a    book-burner,    was     a     biblio- 


SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING     1 93 

phobe.  Himself  the  author  of  at  least  four 
novels,  of  reviews  and  sermons  and  theological 
tracts  and  treatises,  he  must  have  been,  not 
merely  a  scholar,  but  something  of  a  man  of 
letters.  I  must  frankly  say  that  I  have  no  in- 
tention of  taking  the  time  and  pains  to  deter- 
mine whether  I  am  correct  in  my  suspicion  that, 
if  I  may  parody  Pope,  he  was  one  of  those  people 
who  to  books  repair,  not  for  the  pleasure  but  the 
doctrine  there.  His  action  in  the  lecture  room 
that  day  leaves  him  exposed  to  the  charge  that, 
at  times  at  least,  he  was  more  anxious  to  have  a 
book  give  support  to  his  own  views  than  to  have  it 
exhibit  all  the  literary  virtues.  But,  at  bottom, 
the  man  who  cares  only  for  the  books  that  ex- 
pound and  defend  the  causes  he  espouses  is 
really  a  foe,  and  a  very  dangerous  one,  to  litera- 
ture. 

He  is  in  much  the  position  of  the  man  who  is 
pleasant  to  his  friends  and  works  with  his  party 
or  his  church,  but  is  destitute  of  the  truly  humane 
spirit  because  he  is  npt  broad-minded  and  large- 
hearted  enough  to  sympathize  with  the  stranger 
and  the  alien.  He  that  is  not  for  us  is  against 
us  is  a  saying  that  has  a  far  wider  application 
than  we  are  generally  aware  of.     Not  to  be  for 


194     SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING 

our  race  is  to  be  really  against  it  —  it  is  to  be  es- 
sentially selfish  and  self-centred,  even  when  "  self  " 
is  stretched  to  include  social  set,  and  college,  and 
church,  and  party,  and  town,  and  state,  and  nation. 
So  it  is  with  literature  and  art  and  all  the  things 
of  the  mind.  Not  to  be  for  them  all  —  how- 
ever slightly  in  our  poor  finiteness  we  may  com- 
prehend their  full  scope  and  adequately  share  the 
pleasures  every  mental  pursuit  yields  those  that 
love  it  —  is,  surely,  in  the  final  analysis,  to  be 
not  a  little  against  them.  It  is,  at  least,  to  limit 
that  sympathy  which  every  true  artist  and  student 
may  claim  as  his  right  from  the  fellow-men  in 
whose  behalf  he  labors ;  and  by  as  much  as  the 
world's  stock  of  sympathy  is  lessened,  by  so  much 
is  the  way  of  the  altruistic  lover  of  the  true,  the 
beautiful,  and  the  good  made  more  arduous.  Mil- 
ton's aphorism  might  truly  run  — "  As  well  not 
love  a  good  man  as  not  love  a  good  book." 

But  Professor  Sewell  doubtless  thought  very 
honestly  that  Froude's  book  was  a  thoroughly 
bad  one.  It  is  just  here  that  his  example  should 
serve  as  a  warning  —  of  a  sort  perennial,  indeed, 
but  apparently  always  necessary.  The  book  that 
seems  bad  to  us  is  so  likely  to  seem  innocuous,  if 
not   positively  good,  to  a  later   generation.      We 


SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING     195 

are  so  prone  to  be  hard  and  fast  in  our  demands 
upon  books  and  writers  that  the  risk  of  doing  them 
serious  injustice  is  very  great.  With  a  little  ex- 
perience we  can  learn  fairly  well,  I  think,  to  pick 
out  the  trivial,  the  insincere,  the  positively  obscene, 
the  coarsely  irreverent.  No  reader,  for  example, 
of  some  of  Rochester's  poems  has  at  any  time  for 
two  centuries  and  a  quarter  been  at  a  loss  for  a 
verdict  as  to  their  essential  immorality.  But 
when  the  offence  against  morals  ceases  to  be  so 
plain  that  it  can  be  dealt  with  under  positive 
statutes,  and  when  the  triviality  and  insincerity  are 
not  vouched  for  in  plain  ways,  —  for  example,  by 
the  low  type  of  periodical  or  publisher  responsible 
for  their  affronting  the  sun, — the  lessons  of  literary 
history  teach  us  that  we  should  be  exceedingly 
careful  in  asserting  that  any  book  is  foolish  or 
vicious.  But  does  not  experience  tell  us  that  we 
ought  to  be  just  as  careful  with  regard  to  think- 
ing such  things  about  any  man  whom  we  have 
had  no  opportunity  thoroughly  to  study  ?  We 
are  careful  not  to  say  or  write  such  things 
about  men,  for  the  libel  suit  remains  where  the 
horsewhipping  has  disappeared.  But  how  often 
we  think  them  and  later  discover  the  injustice  we 
have  done ;  and  how  often  we  think  and  say  and 


1 96     SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING 

write  things  about  books  and  authors  that  we  live 
to  be  ashamed  of  ! 

I  know  I  am  telling  a  twice-told  tale,  but  it  will 
surely  bear  repetition,  as  long  as  scientific  and 
artistic  and  theological  and  political  partisanship 
may  be  everywhere  seen  among  men.  History 
teaches  us  that  the  accursed  of  to-day  may  be  — 
perhaps,  is  likely  to  be — the  blessed  of  to-morrow; 
yet  we  continue  to  curse  and  excommunicate  and 
to  fancy  that  in  so  doing  we  are  sending  up  grate- 
ful incense  to  the  God  of  peace  and  love.  We 
fancy  that  we  thereby  show  our  zeal  for  the  true, 
the  beautiful,  and  the  good,  when  we  are  only 
giving  a  needless  additional  illustration  of  how 
aptly  the  theory  of  the  simian  descent  of  man  fits 
the  facts  of  human  life.  We  seem  somehow  to 
think  that  our  manhood  is  proportional  to  the 
positiveness  of  our  opinions  upon  disputed  points, 
much  as  some  people  appear  to  regard  war  as 
a  heaven-appointed  agent  for  making  men  and 
nations  brave.  That  partisans  may  be  manly  and 
lovers  of  war  brave  no  intelligent  person  will  deny; 
but  it  is  safer  to  affirm  that  the  catholic-minded 
man  is  the  more  manly  and  the  lover  of  peace  the 
braver. 

There  is  no  need  to  dwell  further  on  the  matter, 


SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING     197 

save  to  say  that  the  Professor  Sewells  have  by  no 
means  disappeared,  even  from  this  so-called  liberal 
country  of  ours.  Every  now  and  then  some  clergy- 
man makes  himself  conspicuous  by  denounc- 
ing the  godless  character  of  modern  learning ; 
some  artist,  equally  ignorant  of  what  men  are 
doing  outside  his  own  sphere  of  activity,  declares 
that  a  great  university  is  destitute  of  idealism,  or 
that  the  public  is  far  sunk  in  bourgeois  insensibility 
and  imbecility.  Worse  still,  books  dealing  with 
politics  and  economics  in  a  fashion  that  does  not 
accord  with  the  notions  prevailing  in  this  or  that  lo- 
cality are  made  the  objects  of  popular  clamor,  while 
their  authors  are  fortunate  if  they  do  not  lose  social 
position  and,  in  some  cases,  the  means  of  liveli- 
hood. The  thoughtless  public  and  newspapers  of 
the  baser  sort  fan  these,  it  must  be  confessed, 
comparatively  mild  flames  of  persecution.  This  is 
not  surprising,  and  it  will  continue  for  many  a  day. 
What  is  more  surprising  and  more  pitiful  is  to  see 
an  entire  college  or  university  faculty  stand  quiet, 
as  Exeter  College  stood,  when  one  of  its  members 
is  denounced  for  exercising  his  right  to  think  and 
to  express  in  reputable  language  the  results  of  his 
thinking.  Fortunately,  it  is  not  always  thus.  In 
a  New  England  state  noted  for  its  political  corrup- 


198     SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING 

tion,  one  college  faculty  in  quite  recent  times  has 
stood  out  in  a  most  manly  fashion  for  free- 
dom of  speech  in  politics  and  economics  —  even 
for  freedom  to  utter  what  many  of  its  members 
regarded  as  the  grossest  of  economic  heresies. 

It  behooves  most  of  us,  however,  to  remember 
that,  even  when  we  do  not  cast  books  we  deem  ob- 
noxious into  the  fire,  even  when  we  do  not  join  in 
the  outcry  against  their  writers,  we  are  still  par- 
takers of  the  sin,  or  the  fault,  or  whatever  we  may 
call  it,  of  the  bibliophobe,  of  the  man  who  does  not 
love  books  and  literature  enough  to  trust  them  in 
their  beneficent  work  of  enlightening  the  world, 
who  sets  up  his  small  prejudices  against  the  dictates 
of  charity  and  the  lessons  of  history.  "  He  that  is 
not  for  me  is  against  me ;  "  he  that  is  silent  when 
freedom  is  threatened  and  assailed  is  in  his  heart 
a  slave.  The  rights  of  books  is  but  another  phrase 
for  the  rights  of  man ;  the  active  bibliophobe,  if 
he  were  not  so  silly  and  comparatively  harmless, 
would  be  as  loathsome  as  a  tyrant;  the  passive 
bibliophobe,  as  despicable  as  a  thrall.  And  let  us 
remember  that  bibliophobia  and  tyranny  join  hands 
when,  as  in  these  United  States  within  the  past 
ten  years,  it  is  seriously  proposed,  in  the  press  and 
in  conversation,    to    punish    as    traitors  men  who 


SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING     199 

deem  it  their  duty  to  denounce  the  foreign  policy 
of  the  majority  toward  alien  races. 


II 

Professor  Sewell  seems  to  have  lineal  descend- 
ants, or,  at  least,  disciples,  in  America.  Not  long 
ago  the  newspapers  printed  a  despatch  from  one 
of  our  Western  towns  which  described  how  a  cer- 
tain clergyman  thought  it  proper  to  burn  in  a 
stove  in  the  centre  of  his  church,  before  his  awe- 
struck or  snickering  congregation,  the  writings  of 
certain  authors  whom  the  world  has  long  looked 
upon  with  favor.  Among  the  writers  thus  con- 
signed to  the  flames  in  the  persons  of  their  books 
—  long  after  their  bones  had  been  consigned  to 
earth  and  their  souls,  I  fear,  in  the  opinion  of  our 
good  clergyman,  to  fiercer  flames  than  those  of  his 
stove  —  were  William  Shakspere  and  George 
Gordon,  Lord  Byron.  Most  of  the  persons  who 
read  the  despatch  were,  naturally,  tempted  to  smile 
at  this  recrudescence  of  the  spirit  which  led  the 
English  Puritans  to  smash  cathedral  windows  — 
indeed,  the  despatch  would  not  have  been  sent  out 
to  the  newspapers  of  the  country  if  the  minister's 
performance  had  not  been  deemed  erratic  enough 


2CO    SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING 

to  furnish  food  for  a  small  amount  at  least  of 
national  merriment.  It  is  a  form  of  amusement 
not  infrequently  vouchsafed  us.  For  example,  a 
rather  distinguished  and  somewhat  venerable 
American  poet,  in  discussing  the  decline  of  popu- 
lar interest  in  poetry,  has  lately  enlarged  upon 
what  he  considers  the  overweening  and  overshad- 
owing influence  of  Shakspere  and  Milton,  who,  he 
thinks,  have  no  real  message  for  our  day,  with  its 
special  problems,  and  whom,  accordingly,  he  be- 
rates severely.  It  is  not,  however,  the  element  of 
amusement  involved  in  these  and  similar  acts  and 
expressions  of  opinion  on  which  I  wish  to  com- 
ment for  a  moment;  it  is  rather  the  serious  element 
that  can  be  discovered  in  them. 

I  doubt  whether  it  is  safe  to  set  down,  as  some 
people  are  often  inclined  to  do,  ebullitions  of  puri- 
tanism  such  as  that  of  the  Western  clergyman,  to 
the  only  too  common  desire  to  make  one's  self 
conspicuous  in  one  way  or  another.  It  is  by  no 
means  certain  that  this  latest  book-burner  fondly 
hoped  that  he  would  be  remembered  as  a  second 
Omar  —  granting  that  Omar  really  did  destroy  the 
Alexandrian  Library  —  or  as  a  second  Erostratus, 
—  the  vain  person,  it  will  be  remembered,  who, 
on  the  night  Alexander  the  Great  was  born,  set 


SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING     201 

fire  to  the  famous  temple  of  Diana  at  Ephesus 
merely  that  he  might  be  remembered  for  his  crime, 
—  a  purpose  more  signally  accomplished  in  his 
case  than  many  a  better  one  has  been.  Perhaps 
our  zealous  Westerner  never  heard  of  Erostratus 
or  of  Omar  or  of  Professor  Sewell,  though  he 
doubtless  knew  that  it  used  to  be  the  custom  to 
burn  in  public  books  deemed  to  be  pernicious.  He 
apparently  forgot  that  it  was  the  public  hangman 
that  usually  performed  this  questionable  service. 

No,  I  do  not  think  that  his  extraordinary  action 
proceeded  from  vanity.  I  suspect  that  he  was 
merely  doing  what  we  are  all  continually  doing,  or 
ought  to  be  doing,  —  simply  trying  to  square  his 
own  soul  with  its  environment  and  by  his  example 
to  help  other  souls  to  square  themselves.  Life  to 
that  man  was  largely  a  question  of  following  liter- 
ally certain  straight  lines  of  conduct  laid  down  by 
his  religion  and  of  holding  tenaciously  certain 
tenets  laid  down  by  his  church,  and  he  not  only 
found  little  or  nothing  in  the  works  of  Shakspere 
and  Byron  that  helped  him  to  do  this,  but  he  found 
many  a  page  dealing  with  lust  and  crime  in  a  way 
that  repelled  his  simple  soul  and  hindered  him  from 
following  the  lines  of  conduct  and  opinion  which 
in  his  judgment  lead   to  eternal  life.     Once  pos- 


202     SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING 

sessed  of  such  an  idea,  what  should  a  good  pastor 
do  but  seek  to  warn  his  flock  in  the  most  impres- 
sive manner  possible  against  the  dangers  he  had 
discovered  and  shunned  ?  He  should  not  have 
been  so  narrow-minded,  we  reply ;  he  should  not 
have  been  so  conceited  as  to  set  up  his  individual 
opinion  of  Shakspere  against  that  of  the  edu- 
cated world;  he  should  have  possessed  some  at 
least  of  the  elements  of  humor. 

But  given  his  environment,  given  his  opportu- 
nities of  culture,  how  could  he  have  been  anything 
else  than  narrow-minded,  and  how  many  narrow- 
minded  bigots  of  one  sort  or  another  there  are  in 
America  and  in  the  world,  and  how  far  do  we  our- 
selves escape  being  narrow-minded  in  one  respect 
or  another  ?  How  many  of  us  are  absolutely 
broad-minded  in  politics,  in  our  social  relations,  in 
our  tastes  and  sympathies  in  matters  of  religion 
and  art  and  literature?  Suppose  the  injunction 
were  given  us,  "  Let  him  who  is  without  small- 
mindedness  be  the  first  to  sneer  or  laugh  at  this 
preacher  taken  in  the  act  of  burning  Shak- 
spere," how  many  of  us  would  be  inclined  to 
indulge  in  scorn  or  hilarity  ?  It  was  precisely 
because  he  was  narrow-minded  and  earnest  that 
he  set  his  own  judgment  over  against  that  of  the 


SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING     203 

world  and  made  himself  appear  ridiculously  con- 
ceited. It  was  precisely  because  he  was  the 
product  of  a  cramped  and  cramping  environment, 
that  he  did  not  have  that  saving  sense  of  humor 
which  often,  though  by  no  means  always,  prevents 
us  from  doing  things  as  ridiculous  in  their  way 
as  burning  the  works  of  Byron  in  a  church  stove. 
To  say  that  such  a  man  should  not  have  been 
narrow,  conceited,  and  lacking  in  humor  is  to  say 
that  he  should  not  have  been  himself,  —  that  is, 
that  he  should  not  have  been  the  product  of 
several  centuries  of  lower  middle  class  Philis- 
tinism. 

And  not  only  was  this  primitive-minded  pastor 
in  all  probability  acting  in  good  faith  and  in  ac- 
cordance with  all  the  light  he  had,  but  he  was 
answering  in  his  own  way  a  question  the  world 
has  been  putting  to  itself  for  ages,  viz.,  What 
should  be  the  attitude  of  the  man  who  believes 
that  conduct  is  three-fourths  or  more  of  life 
toward  the  arts  that  to  a  greater  or  less  degree 
influence  conduct,  and  what  responsibilities  rest 
upon  the  artist  in  this  regard  ?  A  tremendously 
puzzling  question  it  has  proved  to  be  —  one  that 
has  never  been  fully  answered,  one  that  cannot, 
perhaps,    be   answered  save   in  a   halting  and   a 


204     SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING 

partial  manner.  Plato,  as  we  all  know,  excluded 
most  of  the  poets  from  his  "  Republic"  —  for  rea- 
sons, much  less  crudely  expressed,  but  not  cer- 
tainly wiser,  than  those  of  his  latest  follower. 
Milton,  though  he  had  likened  the  killing  of  a 
good  book  to  the  killing  of  a  good  man,  did  not 
altogether  escape  a  few  years  later,  especially 
with  regard  to  Shakspere  himself,  from  show- 
ing some,  at  least,  of  the  moral  intolerance  dis- 
played by  Plato  in  the  third  and  tenth  books  of  his 
"  Republic."  On  the  other  hand,  —  particularly 
in  our  own  day,  —  certain  artists  and  critics  have 
passed  to  the  opposite  extreme,  and,  preaching 
from  the  text,  "  Art  for  art's  sake,"  have  practi- 
cally proclaimed  that  to  consider  the  effects  of 
art  upon  conduct  is  a  piece  of  impertinence 
toward  art  and  artists.  Between  these  two  ex- 
tremes men  have  wandered  up  and  down  seeking 
a  plain  path  to  follow.  Their  common  sense  tells 
them  that  to  read  bad  books  is  but  another  way  of 
keeping  bad  company,  but  they  have  found  it  as 
hard  to  tell  the  good  book  from  the  bad  as  they 
have  often  found  it  to  judge  a  man's  real  character 
before  years  of  association  have  slowly  brought 
some  knowledge  of  it. 

Our   clergyman,  as  we  have    seen,  solved   this 


SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING    205 

ever  present  problem  in  a  rough  and  ready  way. 
Our  ultra-aesthetic  friends,  the  advocates  of  art 
for  art's  sake,  solve  the  problem  by  practising 
the  alleged  trick  of  the  ostrich,  —  they  stick  their 
heads  in  the  sands  of  fallacy  and  say  in  their 
hearts,  "  There  is  no  problem  to  solve."  But 
what  shall  we  do  who  want  to  order  our  conduct 
aright,  and  who  want  to  read  the  books  of  the 
past  and  present  that  have  won  and  are  winning 
places  in  the  literature  of  our  race  ?  I  know  of 
no  simple  answer  to  this  question.  I  can  say  only 
that  the  more  we  read,  the  more  we  educate 
ourselves,  the  more  we  travel,  the  more  we  see  of 
life,  the  more  completely  we  realize  that  there  is  a 
diversity  of  tastes  and  opinions  among  men,  the 
less  the  chance  that  the  classic  books  of  the  past 
and  the  books  of  to-day  vouched  for  by  reputable 
authorities  will  do  us  any  harm  whatsoever.  Ex- 
perience seems  to  show  that  vile  books  and  trivial 
books  stand  little  chance  of  surviving.  It  also 
seems  to  show  that  every  year  added  to  our  age 
diminishes  the  probability  that  a  book  containing 
questionable  elements  will  do  us  harm  either  men- 
tally or  morally.  But  experience  also  shows  that 
no  critic  or  teacher  can  ever  in  this  matter  take 
the   place  of   one's   individual  conscience.      The 


206     SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING 

book  that  by  its  descriptions  of  vicious  characters 
and  incidents  merely  amuses  or  interests  one  man 
in  a  harmless  way  may  actually  instruct  another, 
and  prove  deleterious  to  a  third.  Any  wide 
reader,  if  he  is  frank,  will  admit  that  there  are 
certain  books  that  he  personally  has  never  been 
able  to  read  with  profit  —  nay,  even  without  loss. 
He  will  confess  also  that  there  are  books  which  he 
can  read  in  certain  moods  with  enjoyment  and  no 
loss  of  self-respect,  but  which  in  other  moods  he 
cannot  venture  to  take  up.  What  is  this  but  to 
say  that  we  must  all  learn  to  read  precisely  as  we 
learn  to  live  —  applying  to  the  problem  all  the 
experience  and  all  the  conscientiousness  we  can. 
There  is  no  royal  road  to  learning  or  to  reading 
or  to  conduct,  nor  shall  we  be  helped  on  our  way 
either  by  imitating  our  clerical  friend  or  by  laugh- 
ing at  him.  He  represents  a  class  of  pious  souls 
we  must  reckon  with  —  a  somewhat  decivilizing 
influence  to  be  counteracted  in  legitimate  ways. 
Time  and  education  will  give  him  and  his  like 
their  euthanasia. 

Ill 

Actual   book-burners   are  not   so  numerous   as 
to  set  a  dangerous  example,  but  there  are  people 


SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING     207 

who,  in  a  sense,  are  determined  foes  to  books  — 
people  who,  having  thrown  themselves  heart  and 
soul  into  the  philanthropical  movements  of  our 
time,  tend  to  prize  literature  almost  solely  as  it 
makes  or  does  not  make  for  their  own  ideas  of 
social  progress,  or,  to  be  more  exact,  of  socialistic 
propaganda.1  Zealous  spirits  these,  of  true  cru- 
sading quality  —  the  stuff  of  which  martyrs  are 
made,  —  and  if  they  did  not  exist,  nay  more,  if  they 
did  not  increase  in  our  country,  I  should  come  as 
near  as,  I  suppose,  an  American  can  to  despairing 
of  the  Republic.  Valuable  citizens  as  these  social 
enthusiasts  are,  however,  I  cannot  but  think  that 
they  go  astray  in  their  reasoning  and  lead  others 
astray  whenever  they  undertake  to  discuss  the 
relations  society  sustains  or  should  sustain  to  the 
literature  and  art  of  the  present  and  the  past. 

The  line  of  argument  adopted  by  one  of  the 
most  zealous  social  reformers  I  have  ever  known 
may  be  given  almost  in  his  own  words.  First, 
he  thinks,  with  Tolstoy,  that  a  man  or  woman 
should  do  his  or  her  own  share  in  the  necessary 

1  It  is  interesting  to  compare  their  views  with  those  of  root-and- 
branch  religious  fanatics  ;  such,  for  example,  as  that  Pere  Onorio 
whose  extreme  views  on  modern  civilization  are  presented  with 
great  literary  skill  in  Letter  XI  of  George  Sand's  "  Mademoiselle 
La  Quintinie." 


208     SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING 

manual  toil  of  the  world,  earning  a  living  by  the 
sweat  of  the  brow,  and  not  till  then  spend  a  mo- 
ment's time  in  reading  or  writing  or  teaching  or 
preaching,  much  less  in  ordinary  money-getting. 
It  is  easy,  to  be  sure,  to  offset  this  argument  by 
the  statement  that  the  world  has  other  necessary 
work  to  do  besides  the  physical,  and  that  it  has  dis- 
covered that  by  division  of  labor  it  gets  all  its  kinds 
of  work  better  done.  It  is  not  true,  moreover, 
that  only  physical  labor  is  accomplished  in  the 
literal  sweat  of  one's  brow.  Brain  workers  suffer 
from  exhaustion  far  more  than  hand  workers,  and 
if  they  were  to  earn  their  living  as  hand  workers 
they  would  soon  cease  to  be  brain  workers.  This 
consequence  would  not  disturb  such  social  reform- 
ers as  denounce,  logically  enough,  art  and  letters 
and  other  high  manifestations  of  civilization.  But 
it  must  disturb  those  of  us  who  have  no  precon- 
ceived theories — who  are  only  striving  to  see  our 
duty  in  this  complex  life  and  to  do  it.  Yet,  how- 
ever much  we  may  believe  that  this  claim  of  the 
Tolstoyans  that  all  men  and  women  should  do 
manual  labor  is  erroneous,  we  ought  not  to  shut 
our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  the  Russian  reformer  has 
emphasized  a  great  truth  which  most  of  us  keep 
in    the   background.      He  has  perceived  that  di- 


SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  ROOK-BURNING     209 

vision  of  labor  has  separated  men  into  classes 
which  are  alienated  from  one  another  through  lack 
of  sympathy  caused  by  diversity  of  interests  and 
disproportion  of  wealth.  He  feels  that  this  lack 
of  sympathy  is  the  devil's  work,  not  God's,  for  all 
men  and  women  are  children  of  God  and  should 
love  one  another  according  to  the  Golden  Rule  of 
Christ.  He  knows,  furthermore,  that  to  live  in 
comparative  luxury  one's  self  while  doing  philan- 
thropical  work — whether  giving  money  for  chari- 
table purposes  or  preaching  or  lecturing  to  the 
poor  —  is  not  the  best  way  to  assist  our  brothers, 
because  it  is  generally  done  across  a  social  chasm. 
So  he  has  concluded  that  all  of  us  who  do  not  live 
by  physical  toil  must  cross  the  chasm  and  take  up 
our  lot  with  our  brothers  on  the  other  side.  My 
reforming  friend  thinks  that  this  conclusion  is  cor- 
rect, and  has  acted  upon  it.  I  think  that  the  con- 
clusion is  wrong,  but  only  in  so  far  as  relates  to 
crossing  the  chasm.  Let  us  try  to  fill  it  up  instead 
—  which  brings  us  to  the  second  reason  of  my 
friend. 

A  man's  share  in  the  world's  goods,  he  says, 
is  food  to  eat,  clothes  to  protect  him  from  the 
weather,  and  a  roof  to  sleep  under,  for  without 
these  he  cannot  live.     After  he  has  these,  he  has 


2IO    SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING 

no  right  to  anything  more  until  at  least  this  mini- 
mum is  assured  to  all  other  men.  When  this  is 
done,  he  has  a  right  to  the  same  share  of  the 
superfluity  of  this  world's  goods  as  another  man, 
the  same  right  that  his  brother  has  through  his 
sonship  to  God.  No  man  would  be  true  to  his 
highest  nature  if  he  could  be  content  to  live  in 
purple  while  his  brother  by  blood  lived  in  rags  ; 
but  neither  should  he  be  content,  while  his  brother 
through  Christ  lives  in  rags. 

Is  this  good  reasoning  ?  "  It  is  rank  socialism," 
some  will  say.  Perhaps  so,  perhaps  not ;  but  the 
main  question  is,  Does  this  zealous  reformer  rea- 
son correctly,  and  does  he  lay  down  rules  of  action 
that  all  should  follow  ?  For  my  own  part,  I  think 
that  his  reasoning  requires  only  one  emendation 
to  make  it  sound  and  obligatory  upon  all  of  us 
who  are  trying  to  do  our  duty  in  this  world. 
Society  has  already  assumed  that  every  man  has  a 
right  to  food,  clothes,  and  a  roof  —  a  right  which 
involves,  of  course,  the  correlative  duty  to  work 
for  them.  Our  organized  charities  and  other 
philanthropical  enterprises  may  not  secure  this 
right  to  all  men  in  the  best  possible  way,  but 
they  really  owe  their  existence  to  our  acknowl- 
edgment   of    this    human    right.       Yet    what    of 


SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING     2 1 1 

the  equal  division  of  the  superfluities  of  life  ? 
Have  we  any  right  to  more  of  them  than  our 
brother  has  ?  This  question  will  naturally  sug- 
gest answers  summed  up  in  such  words  as  "  prop- 
erty," "right  of  inheritance,"  "greater  use  of 
opportunities,"  and  the  like ;  but  I  fancy  that  the 
arguments  involved  in  these  and  similar  phrases 
could  be  easily  overthrown.  I  fancy  that  ethically 
the  contention  that  we  have  a  right  only  to  so 
much  wealth  as  every  other  man  and  woman  has 
is  in  need  of  but  one  qualification  in  order  to  be 
sound.  That  qualification  is,  that  we  have  a  right 
merely  to  such  an  extra  amount  of  this  world's 
superfluities  as  will  enable  us  to  do  to  the  best 
advantage  the  necessary  work  of  the  world,  espe- 
cially that  which  is  not  physical.  The  physician 
must  have  his  instruments,  the  student  his  books, 
the  artist  his  studio  and  casts.  But  sheer  luxury 
for  the  sake  of  luxury,  superfluous  wealth  to  en- 
able us  to  do  little  beside  racing  in  automobiles  or 
playing  golf,  —  no  man  or  woman  seems  to  have 
an  indefeasible  moral  right  to,  however  clear  the 
legal  or  the  prescriptive  social  right  may  be.  And 
here,  again,  the  conscience  of  our  age  has  begun 
to  make  itself  felt.  The  gifts  of  rich  men  for  pub- 
lic purposes  have  their  basis,  not  merely  in  indi- 


212     SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING 

vidual  generosity  and  desire  for  notoriety  or  fame, 
but  in  a  slowly  growing  perception  of  the  great 
truth  that  no  man  has  a  right  to  any  extra  share  of 
the  world's  wealth  that  is  not  needed  by  him  for 
the  accomplishment  of  the  special  work  he  is 
doing  for  the  world.  This  may  involve  recreation, 
it  may  involve  the  appliances  of  art  and  culture, 
but  it  does  not  involve  unproductive  idleness,  it 
does  not  involve  the  pampered  existence  of  the 
votary  of  fashion. 

How  far  wrong,  then,  was  my  friend  when  he 
declared  that  his  conscience  told  him  he  was  do- 
ing evil  in  accepting  as  his  own  more  money  than 
three  families  often  have  to  live  upon  ?  After  he 
had  paid  his  board,  he  had  sixty  dollars  a  month 
left,  and  he  did  not  know  how  to  spend  it  in  a  way 
useful  to  all  his  fellows.  So  he  gave  up  his  salary 
for  working  with  his  brains,  and  went  to  working 
with  his  hands. 

Was  he  quixotic  ?  Perhaps  so,  perhaps  not. 
He  was  wrong,  1  think,  if  by  keeping  that  sixty 
dollars  he  could  have  bought  books,  educated 
himself  still  further,  and,  as  an  educated  man, 
have  accomplished  more  good  for  the  world  than 
he  could  possibly  do  by  following  the  course  he 
determined  upon.     He   was  right  if,   by  sharing 


SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING    213 

the  life  of  the  poor,  he  could  become  a  better 
teacher  to  them  and  help  to  lift  them  up  in  the 
scale  of  civilization.  Who  is  to  decide  this  ques- 
tion if  not  the  man  who  is  most  concerned  ? 

But  what  conclusion  are  we  reaching  ?  From 
all  I  have  said  it  would  seem  that  I  am  in  favor  of 
letting  each  man  decide  how  much  he  shall  keep 
for  himself  of  the  wealth  he  is  able  to  acquire.  I 
believe  that  this  is  nearly  the  position  we  ought  to 
take,  provided  we  insist  that  each  man  make  his 
decision  with  the  most  enlightened  conscience  that 
he  can  develop.  The  socialist  on  the  one  hand 
and  the  cynic  on  the  other  will  declare  that  this  is 
leaving  the  matter  indefinite,  and  too  much  in  the 
hands  of  very  fallible  mortals.  But  it  is  that  and 
it  is  there  already.  My  friend  who  has  begun  to 
do  manual  labor  has  had  to  choose  his  occupation, 
his  clothes  to  wear,  his  food  to  eat,  his  room  to 
sleep  in.  He  has  found  it  impossible  to  eschew 
superfluities  entirely ;  he  has  had  to  choose  what  to 
do  with  five  extra  dollars  a  month  instead  of  sixty. 
From  the  lowest  estate  to  the  highest  this  indi- 
vidual responsibility  in  the  sight  of  God  for  our 
use  of  wealth  and  culture  and  time  and  labor  must 
ever  be  felt,  and,  according  as  we  answer  to  it 
faithfully,  so  will  our  lives  be  accounted  worthy  by 


214     SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING 

God  and  by  our  fellows.  Neither  the  philosophy 
of  complete  renunciation  taught  by  the  mediaeval 
ascetics  and  by  Tolstoy,  nor  that  of  complete  self- 
ishness taught  by  the  hedonists  of  all  ages,  and 
especially  by  the  gilded  youth  of  our  own  day,  can 
satisfy  us.  The  problem  is  too  complex  for  a 
simple  solution.  It  will  be  solved,  if  at  all,  only 
by  the  enlightened  conscience  of  humanity  after 
the  lapse  of  many  generations.  But  I  cannot  help 
believing  that  it  will  be  solved,  not  by  all  men  get- 
ting on  one  side  of  the  social  chasm,  but  by  all 
men  striving  to  fill  it  up  by  throwing  into  it  their 
wealth,  their  labor,  and,  if  need  be,  their  very 
souls  and  bodies. 

Now  to  point  the  moral  of  this  part  of  my 
discussion,  which  seems  to  be  much  more  socio- 
logical than  literary  in  character.  My  Tolstoyan 
friend  and  all  who  think  like  him  are  in  a  way 
infected  with  bibliophobia  because  they  are 
jealous  of  the  time  and  devotion  able  men  and 
women  give  to  literature  and  art,  which  seems 
to  be  subtracted  from  what  might  be  given  to  the 
social  regeneration  of  mankind.  They  belong  to 
the  not  innumerous  body  of  those  who  cannot 
make  haste  slowly.  They  see  their  high  goal  and 
dash   impatiently    toward    it.      They    ignore    the 


SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING     2 1  5 

lessons    of    history   and    the    complexity    of    life. 
They   tend    to    forget    the   part   that    books   and 
pictures    and    statues   and  music  have    played   in 
developing   the  sympathies  and   rendering   sensi- 
tive the  consciences  of  men  to  the  point  at  which 
philanthropy  on  a  large  scale  has  become  possible. 
In  their  vision  of  an  equalization  of  wealth  they 
forget  that,  until  the  world    has  vastly  increased 
its  powers  of  production  and  its  store  of  desirable 
objects,  equalization  of  wealth  would  really  mean 
equalization  of  poverty.     They  fail  to  realize  how 
art  and  science,  which  minister  directly  and  in- 
directly   to    increasing    the    efficiency    of    those 
directors    of    labor,    those    captains    of    industry 
without   whom    human    effort,   even    under  a  co- 
operative   or   a    socialistic    system,   would    be   in 
vain,   so  far  as  we  can  now  see,  —  they  fail  to 
realize  how  art  and  science,  which  from  this  point 
of   view    have    a    strictly  utilitarian    value,  would 
droop  and  die,  deprived  as  they  would  inevitably 
be  of  the  whole-hearted  devotion  of  their  votaries 
and,  as  the  enthusiasts  would  like  to  have  it,  of 
their  relations  to  the  art  and  learning  of  the  past. 
I  say  nothing  of  the  loss  of  patronage  they  would 
sustain,  because  it  is  undoubtedly  the  intention  of 
our  socialist  friends,  when  they  come   into  their 


2l6     SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING 

kingdom,  to  substitute  the  social  for  the  demo- 
cratic public  as  the  patron  of  the  arts  and 
sciences.  That  much  might  be  lost  in  any  such 
exchange  of  patrons  seems  possible,  but  the  point 
need  not  be  dwelt  upon. 

What  concerns  us  chiefly  is  the  fact  that  it  is 
easy  for  the  writer  and  the  student  of  books, 
watching  the  more  ostensibly  active  and  philan- 
thropical  work  of  others,  to  grow  pessimistic  and 
to  think  of  himself  as  "side  tracked,"  as  some- 
thing of  a  drone.  It  is  given  to  but  few  to 
blend,  like  William  Morris,  the  functions  of  an 
"idle  singer  of  an  empty  day"  with  those  of  a 
socialistic  agitator.  Especially  when  one  lives  in 
a  large  city  and  sees  misery  swarm  but  a  stone's 
throw  from  the  haunts  of  fabulous  opulence  is 
one  impelled  to  close  one's  books  and  volunteer  in 
the  war  for  civic  and  social  betterment.  There 
is  no  reason  why  one  should  not,  to  a  moderate 
extent,  yield  to  this  laudable  impulse;  but  if  one 
looks  upon  it  as  an  injunction  from  heaven,  one 
is  only  too  likely  to  close  one's  books  in  order  to 
follow  a  will-o'-the-wisp.  To  do  thus  is  but  to 
show  a  distrust  of  literature  and  art  as  real, 
though  not  so  petty,  as  is  shown  by  those 
who  distrust  all  art  and    learning  that  does  not 


SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING     217 

advance  the  causes,  religious  and  political,  that 
they  have  espoused.  In  the  last  analysis  your 
social  enthusiast,  your  root-and-branch  philan- 
thropist, is  as  much  a  creature  of  prejudices  as 
your  religious  or  political  partisan.  He  looks  on 
to  the  future,  while  they,  as  a  rule,  look  back  at 
the  past ;  he  is  an  idealist,  while  they  are  formal- 
ists ;  but  both  he  and  they  are  far  from  being 
truly  balanced,  catholic-minded  men,  "  looking  be- 
fore and  after." 

The  real  lover  of  books  and  pictures,  the  genuine 
student  of  letters  and  the  arts,  ought,  on  the  other 
hand,  to  be  of  all  men  least  the  creature  of 
prejudices  and  party  passions  and  fanatical  en- 
thusiasms. It  is  his  to  enter  upon  and  to  enjoy 
the  stored-up  wisdom  and  the  embodied  beauty 
of  the  past,  and  he  can  do  this  without  losing 
his  sympathy  with  legitimate  present  efforts  to 
improve  the  world  or  his  faith  in  the  future 
triumphs  of  the  social  spirit  of  man.  He  who 
loves  books  truly  is  by  that  fact  enfranchised; 
he  becomes  a  full  citizen  of  the  most  ideal  of 
all  republics,  the  republic  of  thought  and  feel- 
ing. He  who  does  not  trust  literature  to  do  its 
noble  part  in  the  salvation  of  the  race,  who 
would    shackle    men's    thoughts    and    kill    their 


2l8     SOME  REMARKS  ON  MODERN  BOOK-BURNING 

books,  the  children  of  their  brains  and  hearts 
—  even  he  who  would  persuade  those  chosen  to 
love  books  that  their  entire  devotion  is  due  to 
more  obvious  and  concrete  forms  of  philanthropy- 
is  careless  or  ignorant  of  his  own  best  interests, 
and  is  not  to  be  listened  to  without  danger  by  the 
young  and  ardent  soul. 


VIII 
THE  LOVE   OF   POETRY 


[A  paper  read  before  the  Men's  English  Graduate  Club  of 
Columbia  University,  December  16,  1904.] 


VIII 

THE    LOVE    OF   POETRY 

There  has  been  much  discussion  of  late  rel- 
ative to  the  qualifications  requisite  to  the  success- 
ful teaching  and  studying  of  English,  and,  more 
particularly,  of  English  literature.  The  topic  I 
wish  to  say  something  about  belongs,  I  think, 
among  these  qualifications,  although  it  is  not 
absolutely  essential  to  good  teaching  or  to  fair 
attainments  in  certain  portions  of  the  field  of 
English.  It  is  a  useful  asset,  rather  than  a  sine 
qua  non.  If  you  will  let  me  put  it  in  Greek,  now 
that  I  have  already  offended  by  deserting  the 
vernacular,  I  will  say  that  it  is  a  Krrjixa  et?  aei. 
The  love  of  poetry  —  for  that  is  what  I  want  to  talk 
about — deserves,  if  anything  does,  the  encomium 
involved  in  the  Greek  phrase  and  in  Keats's 
equivalent  for  it,  "  a  joy  forever."  But  I  have 
known  excellent  teachers  and  students  of  English 
literature  who  were  honest  enough  to  lay  no 
claim  to  this  eternal  possession. 


222  THE   LOVE  OF  POETRY 

Theirs  was  what  we  may  call  the  sense  for 
prose.  Fiction,  the  essay,  history  and  biography, 
criticism,  prose  comedy  —  in  the  interpretation 
of  these  admirable  forms  of  literature  they  ex- 
celled. The  poetic  tragedy  they  could  compass 
on  its  dramaturgical  side.  Society-verse,  flying 
as  it  does  at  a  low  level,  and  some  of  the  most 
characteristic  work  of  Pope  and  Dryden,  they 
felt  to  lie  within  their  province.  But  for  what  some 
critics  like  to  denominate  essential  poetry  —  for 
the  masterpieces  of  Spenser  and  Milton,  for  the 
lyrics  of  Blake  and  Coleridge,  for  the  subtle  verse 
of  Donne  —  for  these  and  even  for  far  less  quin- 
tessential poetry,  they  would  admit,  in  moments 
of  confidence,  that  they  had  no  genuine  aptitude. 
On  this  side  their  teaching  of  English  literature 
became  perfunctory,  and,  like  honest  men,  they 
eschewed  it  as  far  as  they  could.  I  wonder  how 
many  honest  men  and  women  there  are  to-day 
teaching  prescribed  English  classics  in  our  schools 
who  would  gladly  leave  instruction  in  the  poetical 
texts  to  those  of  their  fellows  who  are  born  lovers 
of  poetry?  I  wonder  how  many  of  the  girls  and 
boys  who  must  be  drilled  in  those  poetical  texts 
would  be  glad  to  secede  and  to  take  up  strictly 
prose  work  with  those  prose-loving  teachers. 


THE   LOVE  OF   POETRY  223 

Let  us  suppose  the  exodus  accomplished,  and 
inquire  into  the  probable  results.  Would  the 
poetry-loving  teachers,  on  the  whole,  do  as  well 
by  their  pupils  as  the  prose-loving  teachers  ? 
They  might  conceivably  do  better,  if  they  were 
to  give  prose  its  due  place  in  their  teaching ;  for 
they  would  presumably  teach  poetry  better,  and 
lovers  of  poetry  are  not,  in  consequence  of  their 
predilection,  necessarily  insensible  to  the  power 
and  charm  of  the  best  prose.  Poets  themselves 
frequently  write  good  prose,  and  a  sense  for  prose 
diction  and  prose  rhythms  is,  I  think,  for  obvious 
reasons,  to  be  expected  of  lovers  of  poetry. 
When  poetry-loving  teachers  slight  prose,  the 
fact  is  generally  due,  not  to  inability  to  appreciate 
works  of  art  composed  in  unmeasured  rhythm, 
but  rather  to  a  yielding  to  the  temptation  to 
overemphasize  the  more  cherished  form  of  litera- 
ture and  to  the  perception  of  the  greater  adapta- 
bility of  poetry  to  the  purposes  of  the  instructor, 
owing  to  its  comparative  succinctness.  The 
teacher  of  poetry  can  deal  with  products  that 
are  artistic  wholes  complete  in  themselves  more 
easily  than  the  teacher  of  prose  can ;  he  can  satis- 
factorily cover  a  larger  number  of  writers  through 
specimens;    he   can   deal  with   the  total  work  of 


224  THE   L0VE  0F   pOETRY 

more  masters.  Your  prose  writer  bulks  larger, 
as  a  rule,  than  your  poet ;  and  the  matter  of 
quantity  thus  making  against  the  one,  and  that 
of  quality,  in  popular  estimation  at  least,  making 
for  the  other,  it  would  be  rather  strange  if  poetry- 
loving  teachers  did  not  somewhat  sacrifice  prose. 
I  believe  that  investigation  will  show  that  they  do 
sacrifice  it. 

If  they  do,  and  if  prose-loving  teachers  tend  to 
teach  poetry  perfunctorily,  why  should  we  not 
call  matters  even,  except  for  those  rather  rare 
cases  in  which  teachers  who  love  poetry  neverthe- 
less manage  to  do  ample  justice  to  prose  ?  Is 
there  any  good  reason  for  ranking  the  teacher 
of  poetry  above  the  teacher  of  prose? 

An  affirmative  answer  is  not,  I  fancy,  so  readily 
given  to  the  latter  question  to-day  as  it  would  have 
been  not  many  years  ago.  Poetry  still  holds,  by 
force  of  tradition,  its  place  of  supremacy  among 
the  arts ;  prose  still  seems  to  many  the  product  of 
a  form  of  genius  more  pedestrian  than  that  with 
which  the  poet  is  supposed  to  be  endowed.  But' 
more  and  more  we  are  being  told  that  this  is  all  an 
assumption.  Lovers  of  music  tell  us  that  that  is 
now  considered,  or  else  soon  will  be  considered, 
the  greatest  of  the  arts.     Some  persons  point  to 


THE  LOVE   OF  POETRY  225 

the  growth  of  prose  in  scope  and  influence  ;  to  its 
flexibility,  to  its  possession  of  rhythmic  cadences, 
which  to  their  ears  are  more  satisfying  than  the 
cadences  of  poetry.  They  declare  that  ours  is  an 
age  of  prose,  that  the  votaries  of  poetry,  if  more  in- 
tense, form  a  smaller  fraction  of  the  total  number 
of  readers  than  was  ever  before  the  case.  Against 
these  assertions  what  has  the  lover  of  poetry  to 
oppose  except  a  personal  conviction  of  the  superior 
glory  of  poetry  over  all  the  other  forms  of  art  in 
which  the  human  spirit  has  sought  to  express 
itself,  or  else  the  personal  conviction  of  some  other 
mortal  or  mortals,  less  fallible  perhaps  than  him- 
self, but  still  fallible  ?  Will  any  amount  of  reason- 
ing, especially  of  deductive  reasoning,  enable  the 
partisan  of  poetry  to  put  to  silence  the  partisan  of 
prose  ?  I  am  inclined  to  answer  in  the  negative. 
I  see  little  use  in  arguing  that  the  one  form  of 
expression  is  superior  to  the  other,  just  as  I  see 
little  use  in  denying  that  prose  has  caught  up 
with  or  surpassed  poetry  in  the  estimation  of  the 
majority.  When  Matthew  Arnold  wrote  that  "the 
future  of  poetry  is  immense,  because  in  poetry, 
where  it  is  worthy  of  its  high  destinies,  our  race, 
as  time  goes  on,  will  find  an  ever  surer  and  surer 
stay,"  he  may  have  proved  himself  to  be  an  inspired 


226  THE  LOVE  OF   POETRY 

prophet;  but  I  am  not  sure  of  it  now,  although  I 
could  have  sworn  to  his  inspiration  twenty  years 
ago.  Now,  I  blush  to  confess  it,  I  am  not  even 
certain  that  I  can  analyze  his  sentence  correctly. 
All  I  am  sure  of  is  that  I  hope  he  was  right,  pro- 
vided I  understand  him. 

But  whither  am  I  leading  you  ?  I  began  by  an- 
nouncing my  purpose  of  talking  about  "  The  Love 
of  Poetry,"  and  I  made  a  sort  of  separation  of  the 
sheep  from  the  goats  among  teachers  and  stu- 
dents, and  here  I  am  basely  surrendering  poetry 
and  one  of  her  high  priests,  so  far  as  lies  in  my 
power,  into  the  hands  of  the  Philistines.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  all  that  I  have  been  guilty  of  so 
far  is  to  grant  that  poetry  may  not  mean  so  much 
in  the  future  as  it  does  to-day,  and  to  express 
the  opinion  that  it  does  not  mean  so  much  to-day 
as  it  meant  in  the  past,  if  we  may  judge  from 
the  declining  ratio  of  its  lovers  to  the  lovers  of 
prose.  This  does  not  mean  that  I  have  felt  my 
own  allegiance  to  poetry  abate  one  jot,  or  that  I 
proclaim  that  allegiance  without  fervor  and  with- 
out the  hope  that  long  after  I  am  dead  and  gone 
some  one  will  be  standing  in  my  place  proclaiming 
his  allegiance  to  poetry  in  more  effective  tones  than 
I  can  compass  and  to  hearers  even  more  keenly 


THE   LOVE   OF   POETRY  227 

responsive  than  any  of  you.  It  merely  means  that 
in  my  judgment  there  are  some  causes  that  are 
served  better  through  the  witness  borne  by  love 
than  through  the  support  rendered  by  argument, 
that  I  have  very  little  confidence  in  the  power  of 
tradition  to  maintain  for  long  any  form  of  suprem- 
acy that  has  once  been  seriously  questioned,  and 
that  finally,  the  older  I  grow,  the  less  store  I  set 
by  prophecy. 

I  return,  therefore,  to  the  proposition  with  which 
I  started,  a  proposition  which  no  mortal  will  deny, 
that  a  love  of  poetry  is  or  may  be  made  a  valuable 
asset  to  teachers  and  students  of  literature,  —  a 
fact  which  may  be  gathered  inferentially  from  a 
consideration  of  the  value  of  a  love  of  poetry  to 
you  and  me  as  individuals. 

But  this  is  a  theme  that  has  occupied  the  pens 
of  poets  and  critics  ever  since  the  Muses  gave  to 
Linus  "to  sing  with  a  clear  voice  a  song  to  men." 
Why  not  make  a  choice  anthology  of  passages  in 
praise  of  poetry,  and  read  it,  and  have  done  ? 
Chiefly  because  such  a  compilation  is  bound  to  be 
somewhat  conventional  and  to  lack  the  peculiar 
sort  of  appeal  made  by  any  one  who  bears  per- 
sonal witness  to  a  conviction,  a  passion,  an  ob- 
session.     I    propose    instead   to   try   to   tell   you 


228  THE   LOVE   OF   POETRY 

some  of  the  reasons  that  make  me  love  and  value 
poetry. 

In  order  to  get  at  the  chief  reason  it  seems  to 
me  that  I  ought  to  ask  what  effect  corresponds  in 
me  with  the  inspiration  which  prompts  the  poet  to 
his  highest  utterance.  When  the  poet  is  in  a  fine 
frenzy,  to  adapt  Shakspere's  phrase,  what  am  I 
in,  or  what  should  I  be  in  ?  I  know  of  no  better 
answer  to  this  question  than  that  given  by  the  word 
—  rapture.  A  fine  frenzy  seizes  the  poet's  heart 
and  brain,  transmits  itself  to  his  verse,  passes 
through  that  medium  into  me,  and,  losing  for  the 
time  being  its  creative  quality,  is  transformed  into 
that  more  or  less  passive  state  we  call  rapture. 
This  is  to  me  the  supreme  value  of  great  poetry, 
that,  more  than  anything  else,  with  fewer  draining 
demands  upon  my  store  of  vitality,  my  time,  my 
purse,  —  in  short,  upon  the  essential  me  and  my 
accessories,  —  it  lifts  me  higher  toward  heaven, 
opens  my  eyes  more  surely  to  the  Beatific  Vision, 
wraps  me  "  out  of  space,  out  of  time,"  transmutes 
me  and  transforms  me  more  completely  and 
ecstatically  than  any  other  transmuting  and  trans- 
forming agent  of  which  I  have  knowledge.  I 
readily  grant  that  it  is  only  the  greatest  poetry 
which  has  this  wonderful  power,  that  there  is  much 


THE   LOVE  OF   POETRY  229 

poetry  which  gives  me  pleasure  only,  and  often  a 
pleasure  differentiated  but  slightly  from  that  given 
by  prose.  I  grant  also  that  rapture  may  be  given 
by  prose  —  for  me  personally  chiefly  by  some  of 
the  prose  of  one  poet,  Milton,  who,  when  he  was 
composing  it,  slipped  his  singing  robes  half  on,  in 
a  fit  of  aberration.  But  the  main  points  are  that 
great  poetry  more  surely  than  anything  else  pro- 
duces in  me  the  most  desirable  condition  known 
to  me,  —  that  of  rapture,  and  that  I  can  read 
poetry  at  all  times  and  seasons  and  of  all  qualities 
and  kinds,  carried  along  by  the  hope  that,  if  only 
by  accident,  the  poet  will  fall  into  a  fine  frenzy 
and  so  cause  me  to  fall  into  a  fine  rapture;  or,  if 
falling  suggests  dropping,  and  that  in  turn  bathos, 
I  will  put  it  differently  and  say  that  I  read  on 
buoyed  by  the  hope  that  the  poet  will  soar  aloft 
in  a  fine  frenzy  and  carry  me  up  with  him  into  the 
heaven  of  rapture.  For  although  I  know  by  ex- 
perience that  I  shall  not  often  be  carried  all  the 
way,  I  know  also  by  experience  that  there  are  re- 
gions of  delight  short  of  the  heaven  of  rapture,  and 
spaces  of  quiet  joy  short  of  the  regions  of  delight, 
and  fleecy  cloud-strata  of  pleasure  short  of  the 
spaces  of  quiet  joy  to  any  one  of  which  the  capable 
poet  may  lift  me,  the  confiding  lover  of  poetry. 


23O  THE   LOVE   OF   POETRY 

These  metaphors  which,  without  evincing  con- 
ceit, I  may  call  elevated,  seem  likely  to  mislead  us 
unless  we  are  careful  not  to  draw  inferences  from 
them.  It  is  correct  enough  to  say  that  great  poetry 
elevates,  but  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  that 
great  poetry  is  coextensive  with  what  we  call  sub- 
lime poetry.  The  supreme  English  master  of  the 
sublime  shows  us  in  his  so-called  minor  poems  that 
elemental  purity  and  rich  beauty  may  make  poetry 
great  and  induce  in  us  rapture  of  the  most  authen- 
tic kind.  The  speeches  of  the  Lady  in  "  Comus," 
the  flower  passage  in  "  Lycidas,"  the  pictures  in 
"  L'Allegro  "  and  "  II  Penseroso,"  may  produce 
rapture  or  something  not  far  short  of  it,  but  they 
are  not  sublime  poetry.  I  will  admit  that  in  my 
judgment  rapture  is  rarely  produced,  as  a  rule,  by 
anything  that  is  destitute  of  the  magical  power  of 
transporting  us  out  of  our  present  environment, 
indeed  of  carrying  us  far  away  from  it.  The 
poetry  of  commonplace  sentiment,  the  poetry  of 
modern  realism,  which  is  quite  content  to  deal  with 
steam  engines  and  automobiles,  and  often  succeeds 
in  making  them  puff  rhythmically,  the  poetry  that 
bears  the  marks  of  any  reigning  fad  or  fashion, 
and  hence  never  lets  us  forget  that  we  are  readers 
belonging  to  the  first  decade  of  the  twentieth  cen- 


THE   LOVE   OF   POETRY  23 1 

tury  —  such  poetry  may  frequently  give  us  pleas- 
ure, and,  when  it  is  fresh,  it  may  even  give  us 
delight;  but  I  think  it  can  give  us  rapture  only 
when  we  are  ignorant  of  the  poetry  which  by 
transporting  yields  us,  if  I  may  play  on  words, 
true  transports.  This  does  not  mean,  of  course, 
that  the  work  of  a  contemporary  poet  cannot  yield 
us  rapture,  for  a  great  poet  like  Wordsworth  or 
Coleridge  can  transport  the  few  souls  that  first 
lend  capable  ears  into  new  worlds  of  imagination 
and  spiritual  experience,  and  in  those  worlds  those 
souls  feel  rapture  unalloyed.  All  I  would  contend 
for  is  that  poetry  gains  through  age,  as  many  pic- 
tures do,  and  that  it  is  the  transporting  quality  of 
poetry,  especially  of  much  of  the  best  of  the  older 
poetry,  that  gives  it,  in  conjunction  with  its  uni- 
versality, with  its  truth  to  life  and  to  nature,  the 
rapture-producing  power  with  which  we  are  deal- 
ing. Universality,  truth  to  life  and  to  nature,  when 
they  can  be  truly  predicated  of  any  work  of  con- 
temporary art  ought,  indeed,  involving  as  they 
must  do  the  power  of  approximately  perfect  ex- 
pression, to  appeal  to  us  profoundly  and  yield  us 
rapture.  Unfortunately,  however,  we  are  so  con- 
stituted that  there  are  a  thousand  chances  that  we 
shall  see  the  universal  in  what  time  soon  proves 


232  THE  LOVE  OF  POETRY 

to  be  but  fragmentary  and  transient,  to  one  that 
we  shall  be  able  to  recognize  it  in  the  rare  work  in 
which  it  is  really  embodied.  Hence  I  think  I  am 
right  in  advising  you  to  seek  rapture  where  it  is 
most  certainly  to  be  found  —  that  is,  in  reading 
the  works  of  the  great  transporting  poets  of  the 
past.  It  is  great  poetry  —  not  the  rapid  transit 
inventions  of  modern  science,  wonderful  as  these 
are  —  that  comes  nearest  in  our  mortal  life  to  dis- 
charging the  functions  of  those  admirable  carpets 
which  in  "  The  Arabian  Nights  "  fly  through  the 
air  bearing  hero  and  heroine  to  some  far-off  land 
where  the  streams  run  felicity  and  the  winds 
breathe  joy. 

You  will  doubtless  have  perceived  that  I  am 
emulating  the  modern  physicist  who  reduces 
everything  to  a  form  of  motion.  Rapture, — which 
implies  being  snatched,  —  transporting,  carrying 
away  —  these  are  the  words  on  which  I  have  rung 
the  changes  in  this  talk  about  "The  Love  of 
Poetry."  But  does  not  poetry  give  wings  to  the 
soul,  and  are  we  not  always  wishing  for  wings  ? 
Men  wanted  to  fly  before  Daedalus,  and  they  will 
launch  themselves  for  centuries  from  the  roof  of 
the  Smithsonian  Institution.  The  flying  I  am  here 
recommending  is  done  much  more  easily  and  with 


THE  LOVE  OF  POETRY  233 

far  less  danger.  And  it  is  done  not  merely  in 
space,  but  in  time.  Borne  upwards  with  Milton 
we  can  penetrate  the  heaven  of  heavens ;  borne 
backwards  with  Homer  we  can  visit  either  the 
ringing  plains  of  windy  Troy  or  the  peaceful 
homes  of  the  blessed  Phaeacians,  "  mariners  of 
renown,  outermost  of  men,  living  far  apart  in  the 
wash  of  the  waves."  We  exclaim  at  the  wonders 
produced  by  the  pressing  of  an  electric  button ; 
do  they  really  surpass  the  wonders  evoked  by  the 
sight  of  a  tiny  group  of  letters  — 

"  All  the  charm  of  all  the  Muses  often  flowering  in  a  lonely 
word." 

But  some  verbal  stickler — are  they  ever  real 
word-lovers  ?  —  may  ask  what  I  meant  by  saying 
that  I  almost  never  get  rapture  from  prose,  when 
I  have  just  practically  admitted  that  I  can  get 
rapture  from  a  single  word.  Do  words  lose  their 
qualities  when  a  Milton  turns  them  over  to  a 
Burke?  It  would  be  foolish,  I  think,  to  answer 
"Yes";  but  while  I  stand  convicted  of  verbal 
contradiction  and  of  apparent  exaggeration,  the 
facts  of  my  personal  experience  are  about  as  I 
have  stated  them.  However  much  I  may  admire 
prose,  the  stately  march  of  Gibbon,  the  magnifi- 


234  THE   L0VE   0F   POETRY 

cence  of  Burke,  the  gorgeous  splendor  of  Ruskin, 
the  grace  and  ease  of  Arnold  —  it  rarely  or  never 
induces  in  me  the  intimate  delight,  the  gratitude, 
the  reverence  that  accompany  my  reading  of  great 
poetry.  Long  experience  has  taught  me  this,  and 
hence  it  is,  perhaps,  that  I  do  not  bring  to  my 
study  and  appreciation  of  the  details  of  a  prose 
composition  a  mind  and  soul  so  enraptured,  so  ex- 
hilarated as  to  invest  them  with  a  halo,  a  glamour. 
In  studying,  or  better  in  enjoying,  poetry,  it  seems 
to  me  that,  partly  through  stored-up  experiences  of 
delight,  partly  through  what  I  must  vaguely  call 
present  flow  and  continuity  of  enjoyment,  I  am  in 
a  state  of  mind  propitious  to  the  discovery  and 
appreciation  of  aesthetic  beauties  in  word  and 
phase  and  cadence  —  beauties  which,  as  it  were, 
accelerate  the  momentum  of  my  imagination's 
flight  or  divert  into  gracious  meanders  my  fancy's 
play.  I  admit  that  all  I  am  saying  is  unphilo- 
sophical,  unscientific,  unworthy,  possibly,  of  serious 
discussion.  It  may  be  only  the  illogical  utterance 
of  a  misguided  enthusiast  who  sees  the  arch  of 
heaven  in  his  mistress's  eyebrow.  But  I  have 
made  no  pretensions  to  being  anything  but  a  lover, 
and  perhaps  true  love  for  poetry  admits  divided 
affections  as  little  as  true  love  for  a  woman  does. 


THE   LOVE   OF   POETRY  235 

Perhaps  the  lovers  of  prose  of  whom  I  spoke,  the 
honest  men  and  women  who  confess  they  do  not 
love  poetry,  are  led  by  great  prose  to  heights  of 
rapture  high  enough  to  overlook  those  to  which 
great  poetry  leads  its  votaries.  Of  that  I  know 
nothing  and  cannot  know.  I  love  great  prose,  I 
think  truly,  but  I  have  adored  —  or,  if  that  is  too 
strong  —  I  have  given  my  allegiance  to  poetry 
ever  since  I  was  old  enough  to  know  that  the 
prime  law  of  our  spiritual  life  is  to  give  ourselves 
to  something  other  than  ourselves  —  to  something 
better,  truer,  and  more  beautiful. 

From  illogical  enthusiasm  you  will  please  permit 
me  to  pass  to  a  sort  of  reminiscential  garrulity. 
While  I  have  remained  true  to  my  love  of  poetry 
ever  since  when,  as  a  boy  of  ten  or  twelve,  I  used 
to  declaim  Byron's  "  Napoleon's  Farewell "  to  a 
group  of  admiring  relatives,  —  the  relatives,  I  may 
say,  admired  me,  but  I  admired  Byron,  and  that 
admiration  has  withstood  the  stress  and  strain  of 
thirty  years,  —  while  I  have  felt  as  though  I  should 
like  to  adapt  the  words  of  Coleridge  and  call  upon 
the  powers  of  nature  to  bear  witness  for  me 

"  With  what  deep  worship  I  have  still  adored 
The  spirit  of  divinest  "  Poetry  — 


236  THE   LOVE  OF   POETRY 

I  have  had  love  affairs  with  quite  as  many 
different  kinds  of  poetry  as  Cowley  had  with  im- 
aginary sweethearts.  If  I  may  trust  the  evidence 
of  old  books,  —  pathetically  cheap  editions,  for 
modern  poets  were  not  to  be  found  in  some 
Southern  libraries  at  least,  and  a  boy  born  in  war 
times  saw  a  dollar  in  the  seventies  about  as  often 
as  your  modern  youth  sees  ten, — if  I  may  trust 
the  dates  written  in  execrable  copies  of  ecstatically 
prized  volumes,  it  was  Keats  and  his  favorite 
Spenser  that  succeeded  Byron  in  my  catalogue  of 
poet-masters ;  but  it  was  Horace  who  first  made 
me  flatter  myself  that  I  might  become  a  rational 
lover  of  poetry.  This  means  that  whatever  critical 
capacity  I  have  was  first  awakened  by  Horace  — 
to  whom  I  owe  a  debt  and  for  whom  I  cherish  a 
love  which  when  I  cease  to  acknowledge,  deterred 
by  modern  undervaluation  of  his  admirable  poetic 
gifts,  may  my  tongue  cleave  to  the  roof  of  my 
mouth.  Shelley,  Tennyson,  and  Pope  followed 
almost  immediately,  and  I  was  delighted  by  all 
three,  and  have  no  word  of  apology  to  offer  for  the 
combination.  Then  came  Coleridge;  then  Long- 
fellow, the  only  American  poet  I  remember  to  have 
enjoyed  in  early  years ;  for  about  my  first  acquaint- 
ance with  Poe,  to  whom  for  one  reason  or  another 


THE   LOVE   OF   POETRY  237 

I  have  since  devoted  many  pages,  I  have  ab- 
solutely no  recollection.  I  recollect  well,  however, 
that  no  alienation  of  South  from  North,  no  in- 
herited belief  that  America  had  made  but  a  poor 
showing  in  creative  literature,  kept  me  from  per- 
ceiving, what  I  still  in  the  face  of  over-subtle 
recent  criticism  perceive,  the  essential  worth  and 
homely  charm  of  Longfellow's  simple  poetry.  If 
I  had  known  Emerson  and  Poe  then,  I  should 
have  thought,  I  am  sure,  as  now,  that  it  is  the 
great  merit  of  the  latter  that  he  rarely  or  never 
appeared  in  public  without  his  singing  robes  about 
him,  and  that  it  is  the  great  error  or  misfortune  of 
the  former  that  he  too  often  knocked  about  in  a 
rhyming  jacket. 

How  should  I  have  thought  otherwise  then, 
when  from  Coleridge  I  passed  to  Shakspere  and 
.0  Milton,  and  a  little  later  to  Sophocles  ?  In 
other  words,  could  a  youth  of  few  books  —  but 
those  the  best  in  English,  Greek  and  Latin, 
French  and  German  —  fail  to  perceive  that  true 
poetry  is  as  much  a  matter  of  style  as  of  sub- 
stance ?  How  could  I  from  the  start  yield 
my  full  allegiance  to  any  poet  who  does  not 
marry  wisdom  to  immortal  verse  ?  As  the  years 
have   gone   by,  I    hope   that   I    have   learned   to 


238  THE  LOVE  OF   POETRY 

give  to  that  line  of  Wordsworth's  a  flexible 
interpretation, — wisdom  of  a  sort  is  married  to 
immortal  verse  of  a  sort  as  well  in  Byron's  "  Don 
Juan "  as  in  his  "  Childe  Harold,"  most  Anglo- 
Saxon  critics  in  their  native  cant  to  the  con- 
trary notwithstanding, — but  I  trust  that  I  have 
never  for  a  moment  ceased  to  believe  that  the 
Muse  must  be  lovely  as  well  as  wise  and  good. 
This  may  be  a  digression,  but  I  said  that  I 
would  be  garrulous,  and  I  confess  I  am  moved 
to  as  much  wrath  as  is  good  for  me,  when  I 
hear  well-meaning  people  counsel  other  people 
to  overlook  a  poet's  technical  defects  and  get 
at  his  message,  in  total  oblivion  of  the  fact  that 
their  favorite  prophet  or  preacher  is  entitled  to 
only  a  very  low  place  on  Parnassus.  Many 
Browningites,  Emersonians,  Whitmanites,  even 
Shaksperians,  make  me  wonder  whether,  because 
sending  messages  with  or  without  wires  and 
with  or  without  rapping-tables  has  become  com- 
mon, the  chief  end  of  existence  is  to  receive 
them.  Poor  benighted  Southerner  that  I  was, 
I  grew  up  in  comparative  ignorance  of  the 
latter-day  cults  of  poet-prophets ;  the  only  mes- 
sage my  poets  brought  me  was  that  the 
gardens  of   the  Hesperides  need   be  counted   no 


THE   LOVE   OF   TOETRY  239 

myth,  that  I  had  but  to  open  any  of  my  well- 
loved  volumes  to  be  transported  thither,  where 
I  could  wander  at  will  and  pluck  the  golden 
fruit.  As  I  think  of  those  unsophisticated  days, 
when  I  fondly  deemed  that  poetry  meant  joy,  — 
not  messages  and  ideas  and  problems,  —  I  can 
truly  exclaim  with  Wordsworth,  — 

"  Bliss  was  it  in  that  dawn  to  be  alive, 
But  to  be  young  was  very  heaven." 

And  yet,  poor  heathen,  there  was  no  Emerson 
or  Whitman,  or  Walter  Pater  or  Ibsen  or 
George  Bernard  Shaw  or  "  R.  L.  S."  or  Rud- 
yard  Kipling  for  me.  I  had  only  the  poets  I 
have  named,  —  and  some  novelists  like  Thack- 
eray, who  was  dead,  and  George  Eliot  and  dear 
old  Trollope  and  excellent  Charles  Reade,  who 
were  living,  —  and  I  added  Moore  and  Campbell 
and  one  or  two  other  old-fashioned  writers  for 
my  acquaintance  with  whom,  I  suppose,  if  I 
were  not  past  forty,  it  would  be  my  duty  to 
blush. 

Some  of  the  things  I  read  were  not  designed, 
I  apprehend,  for  the  perusal  of  a  youngster.  For 
example,  I  took  a  rather  thorough  course  in 
Restoration   comedy,   and   although    the  volumes 


240  THE   LOVE  OF   POETRY 

bore  on  their  fly  leaves  the  name  of  my  grand- 
mother, I  do  not  care  to  shelter  myself  under 
that  respectable  aegis.  I  am  sure  I  should  have 
enjoyed  Congreve,  even  if  I  had  not  known 
that  ladies  read  him  a  hundred  years  before. 
I  am  equally  sure  that  if  I  had  had  a  father 
alive  who  could  have  kept  those  and  certain 
other  books  out  of  my  way  until  I  was  older, 
I  should  have  been  no  worse  off.  They  did 
not  prevent  me,  however,  from  having  as  bad 
a  case  of  Wordsworth  fever  as  any  one  ever 
had  on  attaining  his  majority;  nor  did  Words- 
worth keep  me  from  seeing  in  Homer,  not 
merely  the  Father  but  the  King  of  Poets,  to 
whom  I  still  maintain  that  Dante,  Chaucer, 
Shakspere,  and  Milton  should  make  obeisance 
as  to  their  rightful  lord.  Yet  Homer,  Sophocles, 
and  Euripides,  the  writers  I  was  reading 
when  people  around  me  were  praising  the 
men  who  were  removing  the  reproach  of  lit- 
erary sterility  from  the  South,  Sidney  Lanier, 
Cable,  Harris,  and  the  rest  —  even  the  great 
Greeks,  could  not  wean  me  from  a  love  that 
has  grown  with  my  growth  and  strengthened 
with  my  strength  —  a  love  for  those  wits  of 
Queen    Anne's    day   to    whom    Thackeray,    who, 


THE   LOVE   OF   POETRY  24 1 

by  the  way,  was  never  much  attracted  to  great 
poetry,  so  completely  lost  that  capacious  heart 
of  his.  It  was  in  the  days  following  graduation 
that  I  picked  up  at  book  auctions  little  copies 
of  Prior  and  Gay  that  I  would  not  exchange 
for  their  weight  in  gold.  Cowper  declared  that 
poor,  ill-fated  Robert  Lloyd  was 

"  Sole  heir  and  single 
Of  dear  Mat  Prior's  easy  jingle  ;  " 

but  Prior  was  far  more  than  a  jingler,  and  he 
left  no  heirs,  only  some  very  respectable  collateral 
relations.  He  and  Gay  can  scarcely  be  described 
as  rapture  producers,  but  the  man  they  do  not 
charm  has  had  some  very  humane  elements  omitted 
from  his  composition.  I  felt  this  nearly  twenty 
years  ago,  and  at  a  time  when,  strange  as  it  may 
appear,  I  was  enjoying  the  work  of  Matthew  Ar- 
nold and  the  treasures  of  Ward's  "  English  Poets." 
Nor  could  the  glorious  rhythms  of  Swinburne 
or  the  deep,  passionate  poems  of  Browning,  the 
next  objects  of  my  adoration,  make  me  swerve 
in  my  affection  for  the  eighteenth-century  mas- 
ters. I  am  certain  —  as  certain  as  I  am  of  my 
existence — that  a  love  of  poetry  is  an  unceasing 
source  of  joy;    I  am  almost  equally  certain  that 


242  THE  LOVE  OF  POETRY 

a  catholic,  as  opposed  to  a  narrow,  appreciation,  is 
indispensable  to  any  form  of  healthy  love. 

I  have  now  given  you  "  The  Confessions  of  a 
Lover  of  Poetry  down  to  his  Twenty-fifth  Year," 
which  I  hope  are  at  least  a  little  less  nai've  than 
some  of  the  autobiographies  more  distinguished 
persons  are  persuaded  to  contribute  to  our  maga- 
zines. I  cut  my  recital  short,  not  only  because  I 
do  not  wish  to  bore  you,  but  also  because  I  have 
carried  it  to  the  point  where  in  addition  to  being 
a  lover,  I  became  a  teacher  of  poetry.  From  being 
irresponsible  I  became  responsible.  Henceforth 
there  was  to  be  less  flitting  from  flower  to  flower 
and  more  storing  up  of  honey  in  a  hive.  I  was 
soon  to  learn  that  the  teaching  and  the  study  of 
poetry,  as  opposed  to  browsing  in  it,  are  attended 
by  drawbacks  that  often  try  one's  soul.  It  is  not 
easy  to  talk  about  what  one  would  rather  worship 
silently ;  it  is  not  easy  to  teach  the  delights  of 
poetry  to  superior  young  persons  who,  with  the 
wide  knowledge  of  human  life  derived  from  after- 
noon teas  or  the  football  field,  think  of  one  as 
merely  a  harmless  old  fool ;  it  is  not  easy  to  ex- 
tend one's  knowledge  over  the  tremendous  field 
of  English  literature  in  order  that  one  may  partly 
understand  how  the  poets  and  the  poetry  one  loves 


THE  LOVE   OF   POETRY  243 

came  to  be  what  they  are.  Such  of  you  as  have 
taught  already  will  know  what  I  mean  when  I  say 
that  the  teacher  who  has  to  feed  gaping  mouths 
— not  ears  —  with  choice  morsels  of  poetry  often 
wonders  why  schools  and  colleges  exist.  You  will 
know  what  I  mean  when  I  say  that  the  sight  of 
rows  upon  rows  of  poets  and  commentators  upon 
them  that  one  has  never  read,  that  one  scarcely 
hopes  ever  to  get  time  to  read,  makes  the  teacher 
of  poetry  long  for  a  better  world  where  great 
verse  will  be  diffused  in  the  air,  not  gathered 
between  the  boards  of  books. 

But  while  these  difficulties  of  the  teacher  and 
the  thorough  student  are  very  real  ones,  a  love  of 
poetry  will  enable  him  to  surmount  them  as 
nothing  else  will.  It  is  chiefly  because  this  is  so 
that  I  began  by  assuring  you  that  the  love  of 
poetry  is  a  possession  forever.  To  poetry  you 
can  apply  those  marvellous  verses  of  the  youthful 
Poe  to  Helen  —  themselves  an  almost  matchless 
illustration  of  essential  poetic  charm  :  — 

"...     Thy  beauty  is  to  me 

Like  those  Nicaean  barks  of  yore, 
That  gently,  o'er  a  perfumed  sea, 
The  weary,  wayworn  wanderer  bore 
To  his  own  native  shore." 


244  THE  LOVE  OF  POETRY 

The  spirit  of  poetry  will  not  desert  you  when  the 
day's  work  is  over,  and  you  are  alone  with  your 
books.  A  line  or  two  of  a  dearly  loved  poem,  and 
you  are  under  the  spell  and  you  will  take  up  the 
task  of  preparing  for  to-morrow's  class  as  though 
to-day's  had  not  filled  you  with  despair  for  your- 
self, your  pupils,  and  some  mighty  poet  in  his 
undreamed  of  misery  dead. 

Yes,  there  is  nothing  like  poetry  for  true  restor- 
ative powers.  Each  of  us,  doubtless,  has  his  own 
verse-specific  which  he  not  only  employs,  but  takes 
pleasure  in  recommending.  Mine  are  numerous 
sonnets  of  Shakspere  and  lines  from  the  dramas, 
sundry  periods  of  Milton,  not  a  few  whole  poems 
and  passages  of  Wordsworth,  things  of  Byron, 
Coleridge,  Shelley,  Keats,  Tennyson,  and  Browning 
—  but  more  especially  of  Keats — yet  why  not 
say  Palgrave's  "Golden  Treasury,"  with  Ward's 
"  English  Poets  "  thrown  in,  and  have  done  with 
it  ?  How  is  one  to  narrow  one's  affections  when 
English  poetry  resembles  a  field  covered  with 
daisies  ?  And  if  one  turns  to  other  literatures, 
one  experiences  the  same  embarrassment.  Some 
wiseacres  tell  us  that  the  French  have  little  genius 
for  essential  poetry,  but  many  and  many  a  time, 
reading   this  or  that  great  poet  in  that  exquisite 


THE   LOVE  OF   POETRY  245 

language,  I  have  been  tempted  to  apply  to  him 
in  my  stammering  way  the  words  of  Alfred  de 
Musset  to  Malibran,  — 

"  C'est  cette  voix  du  coeur  qui  seule  au  coeur  arrive 
Que  nul  autre  apres  toi  ne  nous  rendra  jamais." 

And  as  for  what  the  Greeks  and  especially 
Homer  have  left  us,  and  the  tender  Roman  elegists, 
—  the  smooth  elegiac  poets  as  Milton  calls  them, — 
there  is  simply  nothing  to  be  said  to  those  who 
knowing  do  not  love  such  inestimable  treasures. 
Men  may  be  great  philosophers  and  not  love 
Homer,  —  Herbert  Spencer  has  just  proved  it, — 
they  may  even  appreciate  many  other  forms  of 
verse  and  fail  to  come  under  his  ineffable  spell; 
but  if  thirty  years  of  devotion  to  poetry  give  me 
the  right  to  express  a  very  positive  opinion,  I 
will  say  that  the  man  or  woman  who  is  denied  the 
privilege  of  undergoing  the  effects  of  Homer's 
power  and  Homer's  charm  is  deprived  of  a 
rapture  absolutely  unique  and  supreme  among 
the  raptures  the  Muses  bestow  upon  their  wor- 
shippers. I  know  that  this  is  mere  assertion.  I 
can  no  more  prove  it  than  I  can  prove  to  a  certain 
friend  of  mine  that  a  real  Havana  cigar  is  better 
than  the  abominable  weeds  he  genuinely  enjoys 


246  THE   LOVE   OF   POETRY 

and  regularly  presents  me  when  I  dine  with  him. 
There  is  no  way  known  to  me  of  proving  that 
Homer's  Nausicaa  is  a  creation  of  a  higher  order 
than  the  astonishing  heroines  of  some  of  our  most 
popular  novelists  ;  but  fortunately  the  need  of  such 
proof  is  by  no  means  so  great  as  the  difficulty  of 
furnishing  it. 

The  mention  of  Nausicaa  brings,  however,  to  my 
mind  what  I  can  pronounce  unhesitatingly  to  be 
in  my  judgment  the  most  consummate  product  of 
the  art  of  poetry  that  it  has  ever  been  my  for- 
tune to  read.  I  am  judging  simply  through  the 
quantity  and  the  quality  of  the  rapture  it  gave 
me  when  I  first  read  it  nearly  twenty  years  ago, 
through  the  impression  it  has  left  ever  since  on 
my  memory,  through  the  rapture  it  gives  me  to- 
day. Nothing  for  me  quite  takes  the  place  of  the 
pristine  purity,  the  paradisiacal  charm  that  ir- 
radiates the  sixth  book  of  the  Odyssey,  with  its 
description  of  the  white-armed  daughter  of  King 
Alcinous  confronting  on  the  shore  of  the  sound- 
ing sea,  in  all  the  dignity  of  maiden  innocence, 
the  ship-wrecked  favorite  of  Athene,  the  much- 
wandered,  much-enduring  Odysseus.  I  have  seen 
great  pictures  that  made  the  blood  leave  my 
heart  and  rush  to  my  cheeks  and  temples.     One 


THE  LOVE  OF   POETRY  247 

such  I  specially  remember  —  a  marvellous,  a  divine 
angel  that  burst  upon  me  from  a  dark  canvas  by 
Titian  in  a  dark  church  in  Venice.  I  have  for- 
gotten the  name  of  the  church  and  the  subject  of 
the  picture,  but  that  angel  and  that  moment  of 
unexpected  rapture  I  can  never  forget.  Yet  even 
this  luminous  point  in  my  memory  pales  before 
the  moment  when  Nausicaa  first  swam  within  my 
ken,  when  I  first  saw  the  throned  Dawn  awaken 
her,  saw  her  put  on  her  fair  robes  and  hasten 
through  the  palace  halls  to  tell  her  dream  to  her 
parents,  saw  her  standing  tall  beside  her  mother, 
in  the  midst  of  the  handmaidens  spinning  purple 
yarn,  saw  her  taking  counsel  with  her  kingly 
father,  saw  her  harness  the  mules  to  the  polished 
car,  store  it  with  the  shining  raiment,  and  take 
her  way  with  her  maidens  to  the  sea.  As  for  the 
game  of  ball  played  by  her  and  her  blameless 
Phaeacian  attendants  there  in  the  dawn  of  time 
beside  the  primitive  waves,  what  words  save  those 
of  Homer  are  adequate  to  describe  it !  Who  save 
Homer  could  have  put  fitting  speech  into  her 
mouth  before  the  naked  stranger,  or  have  filled 
her  mind  with  the  innocent  guile  of  the  marriage- 
able maiden  ?  "  Shakspere,"  you  answer,  and 
thinking  of  Ferdinand  and  Miranda  I  pause — and, 


248  THE  LOVE  OF   POETRY 

after  due  deliberation,  reply  "  Not  so."  Beside 
Nausicaa,  even  Miranda  seems  to  me  sophisticated, 
though  to  say  that  appear  at  first  blush  to  be 
equivalent  to  saying  that  the  sun  in  his  meridian 
splendor  is  jet  black.  But  I  do  say  it,  because  it 
was  not  Shakspere's  fortune  first  of  mortals  to 
behold  the  filleted  Muses  advance  from  out  the 
mists  of  the  young  world's  dawn,  and  take  their 
predestined  places  upon  their  golden  and  eternal 
thrones. 


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